I; 


Scctioa 


CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 
SO-CALLED 

AN  EXPOSITION  AND  AN 
ESTIMATE 

NOV 

BY 

HENRY  C.  SHELDO 

Professor  in  Boston  University 


NEW  YORK:  EATON  &  MAINS 
CINCINNATI:  JENNINGS  &  GRAHAM 


Copyright,   1913,  by 
HENRY  C.  SHELDON 


PREFACE 

'^Christian  Science^^  is  much  more 
than  a  peculiar  type  of  medical  theory 
and  practice.  It  presents  itself  in  the 
character  of  a  distinct  religion  no  less 
than  does  Mormonism,  which  it 
strongly  resembles  both  in  the  scope 
of  the  prophetical  function  assigned  to 
the  founder  and  in  the  employment  of 
a  concentrated  money  power  in  the 
interest  of  propagandism.  It  is  in  this 
character  of  a  distinct  reUgion  that 
Christian  Science  is  examined  and 
judged  in  the  present  essay,  though, 
of  course,  its  boasted  healing  art  is  so 
much  of  a  factor  in  the  religion  that  it 
must  be  accorded  some  attention. 

We  offer  no  apology  for  borrowing 
certain  statements  of  fact  from  the 
book  of  Georgine  Milmine  on  the  Life 
of  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy.  Whatever 
may  have  been  the  comments  of  Chris- 

3 


4  PREFACE 

tian  Science  apologists,  this  volume  is 
replete  with  documentary  evidence, 
and  shows  throughout  marks  of  the 
most  painstaking  investigation.  It 
should  be  noticed,  however,  that  the 
substantial  proof  of  our  main  proposi- 
tions is  strictly  dependent  upon  noth- 
ing outside  of  the  statements  of  Mrs. 
Eddy  herself,  as  contained  in  her 
books  or  in  documents  respecting  whose 
authenticity  there  can  be  no  reason- 
able doubt. 

It  is  not  expected  that  this  essay 
will  serve  in  any  way  as  a  mes- 
sage to  the  adherents  of  the  Christian 
Science  cult.  By  the  decree  of  the 
founder  a  boycott  is  to  be  maintained 
against  adverse  literature.  Unless, 
then.  Christian  Scientists  are  to  tres- 
pass against  recognized  authority  they 
must  forbear  genuine  investigation, 
and  content  themselves  with  such  por- 
tions of  mythology  as  are  passed  out 
through  the  approved  channels.     We 


PREFACE  5 

have  abundance  of  good  will  toward 
them,  as  being  very  largely  amiable 
and  well-meaning  people;  but  we  fail 
to  discover  how  we  can  serve  them 
in  the  discharge  of  our  obligation  to 
truth-telling.  Evidence  amounting 
even  to  demonstration  can  make  no 
appeal  to  ears  that  are  pledged  not 
to  hear.  If,  however,  any  disciple  of 
Mrs.  Eddy  should  hazard  a  glance  into 
the  following  pages,  let  him  notice 
that  the  author  has  no  appetite  what- 
ever for  denunciation,  and  that  any 
element  of  severity  to  which  he  has 
given  expression  lies  solely  in  the  facts 
recorded  and  in  inferences  from  the 
facts  so  obvious  as  scarcely  to  need 
formal  statement. 

Boston  University,  May,  1913. 


CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 
SO-CALLED 

AN  EXPOSITION  AND  AN  ESTIMATE 

We  intend  to  be  as  sparing  of  bio- 
graphical details  ^s  our  subject  will 
permit.  It  wiU  be  appropriate,  how- 
ever, to  notice  by  way  of  introduction 
the  following  facts:  That  Mary  A. 
Morse  Baker,  who  later  took  the  name 
of  Glover  from  her  first  husband  and 
of  Eddy  from  her  third  husband,  and 
so  came  to  style  herself  Mary  Baker 
G.  Eddy  (her  divorced  husband,  Pat- 
terson, having  been  excluded),  was 
born  at  Bow,  New  Hampshire,  July 
16,  1821;  came  in  1835  to  reside  at  the 
place  now  called  Tilton;  had  no  fur- 
ther educational  advantages  than  an 
imperfect  course  in  the  district  school; 
suffered  much  in  childhood,  as  also  in 
later  years,  from  an  abnormal  condi- 
tion of  the  nerves;  attracted  some  at- 
7 


8  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

tention  in  early  womanhood  by  reason 
of  susceptibility  to  mesmeric  influence 
and  ability  to  function  as  a  spiritual- 
istic medium;  was  very  much  of  the 
time  in  an  unhappy  state  by  reason  of 
ill  health,  until  in  1862  she  received 
treatment  from  P.  P.  Quimby,  of 
Portland,  Maine;  from  that  time, 
though  by  no  means  a  specimen  of 
normal  health,  was  very  much  quick- 
ened in  courage  and  ambition;  near 
the  end  of  the  sixties  began  to  shape 
the  ideas  which  were  embodied  in  her 
ultimate  system;  commenced  soon  to 
teach  these  ideas  in  a  small  way;  in 
1870  gathered  at  Lynn  her  first  class 
of  pupils;  and  in  1875  issued  the  first 
edition  of  ''Science  and  Health,"  the 
volume  which  was  to  serve  as  the 
authoritative  text-book  of  her  peculiar 
combination  of  the  heaUng  art  with 
religion. 

Cutting  short  the  biographical  out- 
line at  this  point,  we  turn  at  once  to 


SO-CALLED  9 

our  proper  theme.  This  consists  of 
the  following  three  topics:  (1)  The 
claims  of  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy  for 
herself  and  her  system;  (2)  facts  with 
a  moral  import  which  bear  upon  the 
merits  of  the  claims;  (3)  the  claims  as 
they  appear  from  a  rational  point  of 
view. 

I.  Claims  of  the  System 

The  claims  of  the  founder  of  so- 
called  ''Christian  Science' '  are  of  the 
most  extraordinary  scope.  In  the  first 
place,  though  pretending  to  set  forth 
a  fundamental  philosophy  respecting 
God  and  man,  she  denies  that  she  was 
under  the  shghtest  obligation  to  the 
thinkers  of  the  past,  aside  from  Christ 
and  the  biblical  writers.  ''I  have 
found  nothing,"  she  says,  ''in  ancient 
or  modern  systems  on  which  to  found 
my  own,  except  the  teachings  and 
demonstrations  of  our  great  Master, 
and  the  lives  of  prophets  and  apos- 


10  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

tles."^  In  admitting  that  Christ  and 
the  apostles  and  prophets  served  as 
antecedents,  Mrs.  Eddy  makes  a  quaU- 
fication  on  the  absolute  originality  of 
her  scheme;  but  two  considerations 
greatly  reduce  the  significance  of  the 
qualification.  On  the  one  hand,  she 
turns  the  sayings  of  Christ  and  of  the 
bibhcal  writers  into  her  special  prop- 
erty by  claiming  a  sole  prerogative  of 
authentic  interpretation.  ''It  must 
not  be  forgotten/'  she  says,  "that  in 
times  past  arrogant  ignorance  and  pride, 
in  attempting  to  steady  the  ark  of 
truth,  have  dimmed  the  power  and 
glory  of  the  Scriptures,  of  which  the 
Christian  Science  text-book  is  the 
key.'^^  Again  she  remarks,  "I  read 
the  inspired  page  through  a  higher 
than  mortal  sense. ^'^  On  the  other 
hand,  she  implies  that  Christ  was  not 
a  complete  antecedent,  and  that  she 

1  Science  and  Health,  p.  126.     Unless  otherwise  indicated,  we 
cite  from  the  edition  of  1902. 

2  Miscellaneous  Writings,  p.  92.     ^  Ibid.,  p.  58. 


SO-CALLED  11 

has  improved  in  important  respects  on 
his  teaching  and  practice.  ^^Our  Mas- 
ter/' she  writes,  ^^healed  the  sick  and 
taught  the  generalities  of  its  divine 
Principle;  but  he  left  no  definite  rule 
for  demonstrating  his  Principle  of 
healing  and  preventing  disease.  This 
remained  to  be  discovered  through 
Christian  Science."^  Furthermore,  she^ 
says:  ''Even  the  Scriptures  gave  no 
direct  basis  for  demonstrating  the 
spiritual  principle  of  healing  until  our 
heavenly  Father  saw  fit  through  the 
Key  to  the  Scriptures  in  Science  and 
Health  to  unlock  the  mystery  of  God- 
Uness.''^  It  appears,  accordingly,  that 
the  place  which  Mrs.  Eddy  asserts  for 
herself  in  the  process  of  divine  revela- 
tion is  not  in  any  emphatic  sense 
secondary.  While  Christ  and  the 
Scriptures  preceded  her,  she  interprets 
the  latter  with  unrivaled  authority  and 

1  Science  and  Health,  1898,  p.  41. 

2  Retrospection  and  Introspection,  pp.  55,  56. 


12  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

improves  upon  the  teaching  and  ex- 
ample of  the  former. 

So  exceptional  an  order  of  achieve- 
ment implies,  of  course,  a  special  divine 
call  and  replenishment.  In  fact,  Mrs. 
Eddy  sounds  no  uncertain  note  either 
as  respects  the  divine  summons  to  her 
mission  or  her  plenary  inspiration  for 
its  accomplishment.  ^'God  called  her,'' 
she  says,  ^^to  proclaim  his  gospel  to 
this  age.^'^  More  specifically  she 
writes:  ^^In  the  year  1866  I  discovered 
the  Christ  Science,  or  divine  laws  of 
Life,  and  named  it  Christian  Science. 
God  had  been  graciously  fitting  me, 
during  many  years,  for  the  reception  of 
a  final  revelation  of  the  absolute  Prin- 
ciple of  scientific  being  and  healing.  ^'^ 
'^In  following  these  leadings  of  scien- 
tific revelation  the  Bible  was  my  only 
text-book.  The  Scriptures  were  il- 
lumined, reason  and  revelation  were 
reconciled;  and  afterward  the  truth  of 

1  Science  and  Health,  Preface,  p.  xi.        ^  ibid.,  p.  107. 


SO-CALLED  13 

Christian  Science  was  demonstrated. 
No  human  pen  or  tongue  taught  me  || 
the  science  contained  in  this  book,  f 
Science  and  Health;  and  neither 
tongue  nor  pen  can  overthrow  it.'^^ 
This  impUes  clearly  enough  a  claim 
to  inerrant  inspiration,  at  least  as 
respects  subject-matter;  and  the  Hke 
claim  crops  out  in  other  declarations. 
It  is  contained  implicitly  in  the  asser- 
tion that  a  ^'thorough  perusal  of  the 
author's  publications  heals  sickness";^ 
for,  surely,  if  any  taint  of  errant 
mortal  mind  were  upon  these  writings 
they  could  not  be  thought  to  have 
such  wonderful  virtue.  An  imphcit 
claim  to  infallibility  appears,  further- 
more, in  Mrs.  Eddy's  declared  in- 
tolerance for  any  variety  of  teaching 
within  the  domain  of  mental  healing. 
'In  reahty,''  she  says,  ^'there  is  but 
one  school  of  the  science  of  mind- 
healing.    Any  departure  from  Science 

>  Science  and  Health,  p.  110.        2  ibid.,  p.  446. 


14  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

is  an  irreparable  loss  of  Science.  What 
is  said  or  written  correctly  on  this 
Science  originates  from  the  Principle 
and  practice  laid  down  in  Science  and 
Health/'i 

One  of  the  most  starthng  of  the 
assumptions  of  Mrs.  Eddy  lies  in  the 
relation  which  she  predicates  between 
Christian  Science  and  the  Holy  Ghost. 
The  plain  import  of  her  statements  is 
that  she  meant  it  to  be  understood 
that  the  Holy  Ghost  is  to  be  identified 
with  her  system  of  teaching.  In 
Science  and  Health  she  notes  that  she 
uses  the  terms  '^Divine  Science'^  and 
''Christian  Science^'  interchangeably.^ 
But  in  the  seventeenth  chapter  of  the 
same  volume  she  defines  the  Holy 
Ghost  as  ''Divine  Science,  the  de- 
velopments of  eternal  Life,  Truth,  and 
Love"f  and  in  the  preceding  chapter 
she  writes:  "John  the  Baptist  prophe- 

1  Rudimental  Divine  Science,  tenth  edition,  1897,  pp.  29,  30. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  127.        3  Ibid.,  p.  588. 


SO-CALLED  15 

sied  the  coming  of  the  immaculate 
Jesus,  and  John  saw  in  those  days  the 
spiritual  idea  as  the  Messiah  who 
would  baptize  with  the  Holy  Ghost — 
divine  Science. '^^  Again,  she  says: 
'The  ego  is  revealed  in  Father,  Son, 
and  Holy  Ghost;  but  the  full  truth  is 
found  only  in  Divine  Science,  where 
we  see  God  as  Life,  Truth,  and  Love. 
.  .  .  The  Science  of  God  and  Man  is 
the  Holy  Ghost/''  From  this  stand- 
point Mrs.  Eddy  construes  the  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost.  'There  may 
be  those,''  she  remarks,  ''who,  having 
learned  the  power  of  unspoken  thought, 
use  it  rather  to  harm  than  to  heal,  and 
who  are  using  that  power  against 
Christian  Scientists.  This  giant  sin  is 
the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  spoken 
of  in  Matt.  xii.  31,  32."^  As  supple- 
menting this  statement  the  following 
may  fitly  be  added:  "A  sneer  at  meta- 

1  Rudimental  Divine  Science,  tenth  edition,  1897,  p.  562. 

2  Unity  of  Good,  pp.  64,  65. 

'  Miscellaneous  Writings,  1897,  p.  55. 


16  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

physics  is  a  scoff  at  Deity,  at  his  good- 
ness, mercy,  and  might.  Christian 
Science  is  the  unfolding  of  true  meta- 
physics."^ It  would  seem  thus  to  be 
a  very  serious  matter  to  speak  dis- 
respectfully of  Christian  Science.  Still, 
the  gainsayer  may  persist  in  breathing 
somewhat  freely  in  view  of  Mrs. 
Eddy's  categorical  declaration,  ^'Man 
is  incapable  of  sin.''^  The  inference 
necessarily  follows  that  the  liabiHty  to 
commit  a  real  sin  against  the  Holy 
Ghost  reduces  to  quite  harmless  pro- 
portions. 

In  further  illustration  of  Mrs. 
Eddy's  claims,  various  sentences  in 
which  rhetoric  is  put  under  severe 
strain  to  express  the  glory  and  worth 
of  Christian  Science  may  fitly  be 
cited.  The  following  are  specimens: 
^'No  person  can  take  the  individual 
place  of  the  Virgin  Mary.  No  person 
can  compass  or  fulfill  the  individual 

1  Miscellaneous  Writings,  p.  69.         2  Science  and  Health,  p.  475. 


SO-CALLED  17 

mission  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  No 
person  can  take  the  place  of  the 
author  of  Science  and  Health,  the  dis- 
coverer and  founder  of  Christian 
Science.  Each  individual  must  fill  his 
own  niche  in  time  and  eternity.  The 
second  appearing  of  Jesus  is  unques- 
tionably the  spiritual  advent  of  the 
advancing  idea  of  God  as  in  Christian 
Science.^'^  ^^Between  Christian  Science 
and  all  forms  of  superstition  a  great 
gulf  is  fixed,  as  impassable  as  that 
between  Dives  and  Lazarus.  .  .  . 
Science  is  immortal  and  coordinate 
neither  with  the  premises  nor  with 
the  conclusions  of  mortal  beHefs.''^ 
'^Christian  Science  translates  Mind, 
God,  to  mortals.  It  is  the  infinite 
calculus  defining  the  line,  plane,  space, 
and  fourth  dimension  of  Spirit.'^^  ^The 
teacher  of  Christian  Science  needs  con- 
tinually    to     study     this     text-book 

1  Retrospection  and  Introspection,  1900,  pp.  95,  96. 

2  Science  and  Health,  1892,  pp.  83,  84. 
2  Miscellaneous  Writings,  p.  22. 


18  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

[Science  and  Health].  His  work  is  to 
replenish  thought  and  to  spirituaUze 
human  life  from  this  open  fountain  of 
truth  and  love/'^  ^'Divine  Science  is 
not  an  interpolation  of  the  Scriptures, 
but  is  redolent  of  love,  health,  and 
holiness  for  the  whole  human  race. 
It  only  needs  the  prism  of  this  Science 
to  divide  the  rays  of  Truth,  and  to 
bring  out  the  entire  hues  of  Deity, 
which  scholastic  theology  has  hidden. 
.  .  .  This  Science  is  ameliorative  and 
regenerative,  delivering  mankind  from 
all  error  through  the  Ught  and  love 
of  truth. ''2  ''Understanding  is  a  qual- 
ity of  God,  a  quality  which  separates 
Christian  Science  from  supposition  and 
makes  Truth  final.'''  'This  sacred 
city,  described  in  the  Apocalypse 
(xxi.  16)  as  one  that  'lieth  foursquare' 
and  Cometh  'down  from  God,  out  of 
heaven,'  represents  the  light  and  glory 

*  Miacellaneous  Writings,  p.  92. 

«  Ibid.,  pp.  194,  235. 

'  Science  and  Health,  p.  506. 


SO-CALLED  19 

of  divine  Science.  .  .  .  The  four  sides 
of  our  city  are  the  Word,  Christ, 
Christianity,  and  divine  Science."^ 

The  breadth  of  Mrs.  Eddy's  claims 
may  furthermore  be  seen  in  the  radical 
disparagement  in  which  she  indulges 
against  everything  outside  of  Chris- 
tian Science  or  coming  in  anywise  into 
competition  therewith.  She  affirms  in 
so  many  words,  '^Outside  of  this 
Science  all  is  unstable  error. ''^  This 
broad  maxim  she  carries  out  in  various 
directions.  Applying  it  to  the  cus- 
tomary medical  theory  and  practice, 
she  brands  them  as  virtually  forms  of 
assault  against  reason,  revelation,  and 
God.  '^Because  God  is  supreme  and 
omnipotent,''  she  asserts,  '^  materia 
medica,  hygiene,  and  animal  magnet- 
ism are  impotent;  and  their  only 
supposed  efficacy  is  in  apparently  de- 
luding reason,  denying  revelation,  and 


1  Science  and  Health,  p.  575. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  202. 


20  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

dethroning  Deity/ '^  She  does  not 
hesitate  to  put  the  bodily  senses  out 
of  commission,  and  to  set  up  the 
mandates  of  Christian  Science  in  their 
place.  ^The  testimony  of  the  cor- 
poreal senses/'  she  writes,  '^cannot 
inform  us  what  is  real  and  what  is 
delusive.  But  the  revelations  of  Chris- 
tian Science  unlock  the  treasures  of 
truth. ''2  ^To  the  five  corporeal  senses 
man  appears  to  be  matter  and  mind 
united;  but  Christian  Science  reveals 
him  as  the  idea  of  God,  and  declares 
the  corporeal  senses  to  be  mortal  and 
erring  illusions.''^  How  absolutely  in- 
competent the  senses  are  deemed  to 
offer  valid  testimony  appears  in  the 
broad  statement:  '^Human  procrea- 
tion, birth,  life,  and  death  are  subjec- 
tive states  of  the  human  erring  mind.''^ 
With  the  senses  rated  as  incom- 
petent to  offer  any  testimony,  physical 


*  Miscellaneous  Writings,  p.  3.     *  Science  and  Health,  p.  70, 
3  Ibid.,  p.  477.     *  Miscellaneous  Writings,  p.  286. 


SO-CALLED  21 

sciences,  of  whatever  description, 
would  seem  to  be  sent  to  the  dump- 
heap  of  discredited  falsities.  And 
various  statements  of  Mrs.  Eddy, 
whether  held  to  with  entire  consistency 
or  not,  imply  quite  unequivocally  that 
such  is  the  proper  disposition  of  them. 
^'The  so-called  laws  of  matter,^'  she 
says,  ^^are  nothing  but  false  beUefs  in 
the  presence  of  inteUigence  and  life 
where  mind  is  not.'^^  ^'Minerals  and 
vegetables  are  found,  according  to 
divine  Science,  to  be  the  creations  of 
erroneous  thought,  not  of  matter."^ 
'Tertebrata,  articulata,  moUusca,  and 
radiata  are  evolved  by  mortal  and 
material  thought.  By  this  thought 
they  are  classified  and  supposed  to 
possess  life  and  mind.  These  beliefs 
will  disappear  when  the  radiation  of 
Spirit  destroys  forever  any  belief  in 
intelligent  matter''^ — that  is,  as  Mrs. 


1  Science  and  Health,  p.  171. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  543.      » Ibid.,  p.  556. 


n  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

Eddy  must  be  understood  to  mean, 
bars  out  all  faith  in  any  real  associa- 
tion between  mind  and  matter,  soul 
and  body.  The  plain  conclusion  is 
that  Christian  Science  properly  negates 
the  whole  circle  of  the  sciences  as 
commonly  understood.  If  Mrs.  Eddy's 
claims  are  valid,  the  world  is  clearly 
obligated  to  seek  light  from  her  can- 
dle, and  from  no  other  source. 

II.     The    Application    of    Moral 
Tests  to  the  Claims 

Taking  up  our  second  topic,  we 
have  now  to  consider  certain  facts 
which,  by  reason  of  their  moral  im- 
port, bear  upon  the  merits  of  Mrs. 
Eddy's  extraordinary  claims.  We 
touch  here  upon  a  theme  which  we 
should  greatly  prefer  to  pass  by,  were 
it  possible  to  do  so  with  logical  con- 
sistency. But  that  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. Pretensions  to  a  divine  mission 
of  such  transcendent  import  as  Mrs. 


SO-CALLED  23 

Eddy  claimed  for  herself  cannot  be 
regarded  as  indifferently  related  to 
character  and  conduct.  There  is  the 
less  occasion  to  shut  out  these  mat- 
ters, since  evidence  respecting  them 
lies  in  the  open,  and  there  is  no  need 
to  make  inquisition  into  the  more 
private  record  of  this  exacting  claimant 
to  the  faith  and  obeisance  of  Christen- 
dom. 

In  the  first  place,  we  notice  the  very 
remarkable  piece  of  apparent  *  men- 
dacity in  Mrs.  Eddy's  emphatic  repu- 
diation of  obhgation  to  P.  P.  Quimby, 
of  Portland,  Maine,  who  was  an  en- 
thusiast for  mental  healing,  and  who 
wrote  extensively  in  behalf  of  what  he 
considered  his  great  discovery,  leaving 
his  writings,  however,  in  manuscript 
form.  It  is  in  evidence  that  Mrs. 
Eddy  was  in  Portland  in  1862  for 
about  three  weeks,  and  again  in  1864 
for  two  or  three  months,  and  shared 
with  others  the  opportunity  to  copy 


m  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

parts  of  Quimby's  writings  which  the 
generous-hearted  healer  freely  accorded 
to  his  patients.^  Did  she  use  such 
opportunity  and  gain  any  materials  to 
build  her  own  system  upon?  It  suited 
her  thirst  for  exclusive  distinction  in 
her  later  years  to  deny  that  she  did. 
In  her  book  entitled  Retrospection  and 
Introspection  she  calls  Quimby  a  mag- 
netic doctor  and  asserts  that  he  was 
in  no  wise  connected  with  her  dis- 
covery of  the  principle  of  Christian 
Science.^  In  her  volume  of  Miscel- 
laneous Writings  she  styles  Quimby  a 
magnetic  practitioner,  represents  him 
as  depending  upon  manipulation  in  his 
cures,  and  invites  the  reader  to  believe 
that  her  examination  of  his  writings 
was  confined  to  a  casual  glance  at  a 
slip  on  which  he  had  penned  down 
some  quite  indifferent  notes  on  her 
own  case.^     In  the  Christian  Science 


1  Georgine  Milmine,  The  Life  of  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy  and  the 
History  of  Christian  Science,  pp.  56-70. , 

2  Ibid.,  p.  38.     3  Ibid.,  pp.  378,  379. 


SO-CALLED  25 

Journal  for  June,  1887,  she  asserted 
respecting  Quimby:  ^^I  never  heard 
him  intimate  that  he  healed  disease 
mentally.  .  .  .  His  healing  was  never 
considered  or  called  anything  but 
mesmerism/' 

Now,  the  utter  falsity  of  these 
statements  is  matter  of  complete  dem- 
onstration, and  that  in  more  than  one 
line.  The  proof  is  contained,  in  the 
first  place,  in  Quimby's  manuscripts, 
as  Georgine  Milmine,  who  had  free 
access  to  them,  testifies  and  illustrates 
at  length.^  They  show  that  Quimby 
was  emphatically  an  advocate  of  men- 
tal instrumentaUty  in  healing;  that 
such  manipulation  as  he  used  was  a 
comparatively  indifferent  adjunct,  a 
quite  dispensable  thing,  since  he  be- 
lieved in  the  efficacy  of  absent  treat- 
ment; that  he  taught  that  disease  has 
its  source  in  erroneous  belief,  and  that, 
consequently,   the  remedy  lies  in  in- 

1  The  Life  of  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy,  pp.  46-55,  129,  130. 


26  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

stilling  the  truth;  that  he  believed  that 
Christ  had  preceded  him  in  the  science 
of  heahng;  that  he  distinguished  be- 
tween the  embodied  Jesus  and  the 
principle  Christ;  that  he  also  dis- 
tinguished in  man  between  a  kind  of 
transcendental  personahty,  '^the  scien- 
tific man/'  as  he  called  him,  and  the 
inferior  man  who  is  in  bondage  to 
sense  and  error;  that,  in  short,  he 
anticipated  cardinal  features  of  Mrs. 
Eddy's  system,  so  that  she  needed  to 
do  little  else  than  to  intensify  certain 
elements  of  a  pseudo-metaphysics  on 
the  allness  of  God  and  the  nothingness 
of  matter. 

In  the  second  place,  a  scrapbook, 
prepared  by  the  wife  of  Quimby,  and 
containing  newspaper  comments,  as 
also  a  circular  descriptive  of  the 
method  of  cure  practiced  by  her  hus- 
band— both  the  comments  and  the 
circular  antedating  Mrs.  Eddy's  first 
visit  to  Portland — clearly  refutes  her 


SO-CALLED  27 

later  interpretation  of  the  method  of 
the  Portland  healer.  Lyman  P.  Powell, 
who  cites  the  circular  and  specimens 
of  the  newspaper  comments,  which  he 
had  abundant  opportunity  to  examine 
through  the  courtesy  of  George  A. 
Quimby,  renders  the  judgment  that 
the  scrapbook  '^alone  should  suffice 
to  close  the  case/'^ 

In  the  third  place,  very  cogent 
proof  that  Mrs.  Eddy's  statements 
about  the  theory  and  practice  of 
Quimby  were  false  is  contained  in  the 
testimony  of  personal  disciples  of  the 
Portland  mental  healer,  like  Julius  A. 
Dresser  and  W.  F.  Evans,  the  former 
having  given  substantial  evidence  in 
his  book  on  The  True  History  of 
Mental  Science,  edited  by  his  son, 
H.  W.  Dresser,^  and  the  latter  having 

1  Christian  Science,  The  Faith  and  Ita  Founder,  pp.  38-43, 
228-230. 

2  J.  A.  Dresser,  who  visited  Quimby  in  1860,  gives  explicit  cita- 
tions from  his  statements.  H.  W.  Dresser  testifies  that  the  Quimby 
manuscripts,  containing  over  eight  hundred  cloaely  written  pages, 
already  in  existence  six  months  before  Mrs.  Eddy's  first  visit  to 
Portland,  were  read  by  him  and  found  to  "contain  a  very  original 
and  complete  statement  of  the  data  and  theory  of  mental  healing." 


28  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

carried  out  the  principles  of  the  heal- 
ing art  of  his  master  in  writings  of 
his  own.^ 

Finally,  conclusive  proof  of  the 
falsity  of  Mrs.  Eddy's  later  version  of 
Quimby's  healing  art  and  of  her  ref- 
lations to  him  is  contained  in  her 
earlier  version  of  the  same  matters. 
In  1862,  in  a  contribution  to  the 
Portland  Evening  Courier,  expressing 
the  gratitude  she  felt  for  benefits 
received,  she  eulogized  Quimby  in  a 
very  fervent  strain,  repudiated  the 
notion  that  he  healed  by  animal  mag- 
netism, and  asserted  that  it  was  rather 
by  the  truth  which  he  estabhshed  in 
the  patient.  'This  truth,''  she  wrote, 
'Vhich  he  opposes  to  the  error  of 
giving  intelligence  to  matter  and  plac- 
ing pain  where  it  never  placed  itself, 

1  Evans,  in  his  book  on  Mental  Medicine,  published  in  1872, 
three  years  before  Science  and  Health  was  issued,  made  this 
statement:  "Disease  being  in  its  root  a  wrong  belief,  change  that 
belief  and  we  cure  the  disease.  The  late  Dr.  Quimby,  of 
Portland,  one  of  the  most  successful  healers  of  this  or  any  age, 
embraced  this  view  of  the  nature  of  disease"  (p.  210,  cited  by 
J.  Whitehead,  The  Illusions  of  Christian  Science,  pp.  5,  6;  also 
by  W.  J.  Leonard,  The  Pioneer  Apostle  of  Mental  Science). 


SO-CALLED  29 

if  received  understandingly,  changes 
the  currents  of  the  system  to  their 
normal  action;  and  the  mechanism  of 
the  body  goes  on  undisturbed/^^  In  a 
second  contribution  she  hkened  the 
method  of  Quimby  to  that  of  Christ, 
and  declared  of  him,  ^^he  rolls  away 
the  stone  from  the  sepulcher  of  error 
and  health  is  the  resurrection/^  Her 
first  attempts  at  teaching  were  based 
upon  a  manuscript  which  she  acknowl- 
edged to  have  been  derived  from 
Quimby,  an  extant  copy  of  which  cor- 
responds precisely  to  twenty  closely 
written  pages  of  one  of  the  Quimby 
productions — a  production  certified  to 
have  been  in  existence  before  Mrs. 
Eddy  ever  saw  the  Portland  healer/ 
As  late  as  1871,  in  a  letter  to  W.  W. 
Wright,  of  Lynn,  in  answer  to  the 
question,  ^^Has  this  theory  ever  been 

1  J.  A,  Dresser,  The  True  History  of  Mental  Science,  revised 
edition,  1899,  pp.  31,  32. 

^Milmine,  pp.  125-132;  F.  W.  Peabody,  The  Religio-medical 
Masquerade,  pp.  83-87.  Peabody's  book  may  be  a  very  intense 
polemic,  but  no  one  can  deny  that  he  had  first-class  opportunities 
to  get  hold  of  facts. 


30  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

advertised  and  practiced  before  you 
introduced  it,  or  by  any  other  indi- 
vidual?'' Mrs.  Eddy  wrote:  ''Never 
advertised,  and  practiced  by  only  one 
individual  who  healed  me,  Dr.  Quimby, 
of  Portland,  Maine,  an  old  gentleman 
who  had  made  it  a  research  for  twenty- 
five  years,  starting  from  the  stand- 
point of  magnetism,  thence  going  for- 
ward and  leaving  that  behind.''^  So 
the  earlier  Mrs.  Eddy  gives  the  lie  to 
the  later.  How  did  she  explain  the 
flagrant  contradiction?  She  could  only 
take  refuge  in  the  transparent  subter- 
fuge that  if  she  wrote  in  her  earlier 
days  what  was  asserted  to  be  in  the 
record,  it  must  have  been  as  the  result 
of  the  overwhelming  mesmeric  in- 
fluence of  Quimby.  ''Did  I  write,'' 
she  asks,  "those  articles  in  Mr.  Dres- 
ser's pamphlet  purporting  to  be  mine? 
I  might  have  written  them  twenty  or 
thirty  years  ago,  for  I  was  under  the 

1  Milmiue,  p.  101. 


SO-CALLED  SI 

mesmeric  treatment  of  Dr.  Quimby 
from  1862  until  his  death  in  1865. 
He  was  iUiterate  and  I  knew  nothing 
of  the  science  of  mind-heahng.  .  .  . 
Mind-science  was  unknown  to  me; 
and  my  head  was  so  turned  by  animal 
magnetism  and  will-power,  under  his 
treatment,  that  I  might  have  written 
something  as  hopelessly  incorrect  as 
the  articles  now  published  in  the 
Dresser  pamphlet. ^^^  This  reference  to 
the  mesmeric  influence  of  Quimby, 
fantastic  enough  in  itself,  is  thoroughly 
discredited,  on  the  one  hand,  by  the 
content  of  the  letter  to  W.  W.  Wright, 
written  several  years  after  the  death  of 
Quimby,  when  his  mesmeric  influence 
might  be  supposed  to  be  substantially 
extinct,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  by  the 
desperate  feat  to  which  resort  was 
made  in  order  to  gain  countenance  for 
the  fable  that,  as  between  Quimby  and 


1  Christian  Science  Journal,  June,   1887,  pp.    109,   110.     Com- 

Eare  the  testimony  of  Mrs.  Eddy's  literary  adviser,  Rev.  James 
[enry  Wiggin,  cited  by  Milmine,  pp.  102,  103. 


32  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

the  author  of  Science  and  Health,  the 
debt  was  on  the  side  of  the  former. 

Here  we  touch  upon  the  darkest 
phase  of  the  entire  historic  episode. 
In  June  of  1883  Mrs.  Eddy  sent  an 
attorney  to  Sarah  G.  Crosby,  of  Water- 
ville,  Maine,  an  acquaintance  of 
hers  who  had  been  a  patient  of 
Quimby.  By  the  hand  of  her  attorney 
she  conveyed  to  Mrs.  Crosby  a  letter 
in  which  she  sought  to  induce  her  to 
sign  an  affidavit  to  what  a  sane  his- 
torical judgment  cannot  regard  as 
anything  else  than  a  downright  false- 
hood. '^Now,  my  dear  one,''  she 
wrote,  ^^I  want  you  to  tell  this  man, 
the  bearer  of  this  note,  that  you  know 
that  Dr.  Quimby  and  I  were  friends, 
and  that  I  used  to  take  his  scribblings 
and  fix  them  over  for  him  and  give 
him  my  thoughts  and  language,  which, 
as  I  understand  it,  were  far  in  advance 
of  his.  Will  you  do  this  and  give  an 
affidavit    to    this    effect    and    greatly 


SO-CALLED  S3 

oblige  your  affectionate  sister  Mary?''^ 
As  Mrs.  Crosby  preferred  not  to  swear 
to  what  she  knew  to  be  absolutely 
false,  the  soHcited  affidavit  was  not 
forthcoming.  What  Mrs.  Eddy  got 
for  her  pains  was  simply  the  creation 
of  documentary  means  of  exposing  her 
attempt  to  gain  manufactured  evi- 
dence and  a  record  of  her  conviction 
that  matter  in  the  Quimby  manu- 
scripts was  quite  analogous  to  that  of 
her  own  compositions. 

From  the  letter  to  Mrs.  Crosby  it 
appears  that  in  1883  Mrs.  Eddy  was 
ready  to  claim  that  during  the  period 
of  her  acquaintance  with  Quimby  she 
was  able  to  revise  his  manuscripts  in 
the  direction  of  an  improved  exposi- 
tion of  the  subject  of  mental  healing. 
From  the  statement  of  the  same  Mrs. 
Eddy,  in  the  Christian  Science  Jour- 
nal, as  quoted  above,  it  appears  that 
in   1887  she  was  ready  to  aver  that 

1  Included  in  the  afl5davit  of  Mrs.  Crosby,  as  cited  by  Milmine, 
pp.  99-101. 


34  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

during  the  specified  period  she  ^^knew 
nothing  of  the  science  of  mind- 
heahng/'  and  was  too  thoroughly 
swayed  by  mesmeric  influence  to  have 
proper  control  of  thought  and  expres- 
sion. What  less  than  the  desperate 
straits  of  its  perpetrator  does  such  self- 
contradiction  illustrate? 

Were  it  possible  to  explain  the  ap- 
parent mendacity  of  Mrs.  Eddy  by  the 
supposition  that  she  arrived  at  such  a 
peculiar  mental  state  that  she  uncon- 
sciously reversed  the  records  of  the 
past,  we  would  charitably  admit  the 
explanation.  But  the  supposition  is 
not  credible.  The  interval  between 
the  primary  version  of  her  relations 
with  Quimby  and  the  later  version  was 
not  long  enough  naturally  to  work  a 
thorough  metamorphosis  of  her  recol- 
lections of  important  turning-points  in 
her  life.  Then,  too,  the  expedients  to 
which  she  resorted,  and  especially  her 
subtle  approach  to  Mrs.  Crosby,  do 


SO-CALLED  35 

not  reveal  a  woman  who  had  simply 
gotten  into  cloudland  and  could  not 
see  aright  things  that  had  happened 
on  the  earth;  they  show,  rather,  a 
woman  who  was  wide  awake  and 
keenly  cognizant  of  mundane  con- 
nections. Furthermore,  the  specific 
interest  which  urged  Mrs.  Eddy  to  put 
forth  the  revised  version  of  her  obliga- 
tions to  Quimby  is  clearly  manifest 
even  to  common  eyesight.  It  con- 
sisted in  her  intemperate  thirst  for 
sole  distinction  in  the  province  of 
mental  healing. 

The  same  motive  wrought  with  amaz- 
ing vigor  in  other  connections  than  the 
one  reviewed.  It  prompted  her  in 
case  any  of  those  who  had  been  asso- 
ciated with  her  or  figured  in  her  ret- 
inue showed  any  signs  of  independent 
motion,  to  visit  them  with  her  sore 
displeasure,  not  to  say  her  venomous 
hostility.  This  was  strikingly  illus- 
trated in  her  relations  with  Richard 


36  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

Kennedy,  her  first  pupil  of  any  con- 
siderable prominence,  and  the  one 
with  whom  she  was  most  closely 
associated  in  Lynn  from  1870  to  1872. 
At  the  latter  date  he  saw  fit  to  leave 
her  and  to  start  an  independent  prac- 
tice, having  become  weary  of  her 
extravagant  claims  and  domineering 
temper.  For  a  satellite  thus  to  leave 
its  orbit  was  regarded  by  Mrs.  Eddy  as 
an  unpardonable  offense.  She  began 
to  denounce  him  as  a  mesmerist  and  a 
traitor  to  science  because  he  manipu- 
lated his  patients'  heads  after  the 
Quimby  method — the  very  method 
which  she  had  taught  him  and  which 
she  herseK  practiced  for  years.^  Worse 
than  this,  she  went  on  to  picture  the 
kind-hearted  and  popular  young  man 
as  a  villain  of  the  deepest  dye,  who 
with  the  malignity  of  the  witch  used 
the  resources  of  malicious  animal  mag- 
netism to  harry  and  to  injure  people. 

1  For  adequate  proofa  see  Milmine,  pp.  143-145. 


SO-CALLED  37 

Her  feeling  against  him  reached  the 
pitch  of  hysterical  frenzy,  as  appears 
in  the  third  edition  of  Science  and 
Health,  where  a  large  section  of  the 
extended  chapter  on  demonology  is 
given  to  the  excoriation  of  Kennedy. 
She  styles  him  a  moral  leper,  and 
charges  against  his  demonic  art  a 
catalogue  of  ills  which  had  befallen 
her.  Breaking  out  into  a  dramatic 
strain,  she  prophesies  his  ruin  in  these 
lurid  terms:  'The  Nero  of  to-day, 
regaling  himself  with  the  tortures  of 
individuals,  is  repeating  history,  and 
will  fall  upon  his  own  sword,  and  it 
shall  pierce  him  through.  Let  him 
remember  this  when  in  the  dark  re- 
cesses of  his  thought  he  is  robbing, 
committing  adultery,  or  kilHng;  when 
he  is  attempting  to  turn  friend  away 
from  friend,  ruthlessly  stabbing  the 
quivering  heart. ''^ 

An  illustration  almost  rivaling  that 


^  Science  and  Health,  third  edition,  revised,  1881,  vol.  ii,  chap.  vi. 


38  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

of  the  Kennedy  ease,  as  to  what  a 
satelUte  must  expect  when  deviating 
from  the  orbit  of  perfect  subserviency, 
was  furnished  by  Daniel  H.  Spofford. 
In  a  kind  of  supplement  to  the  second 
edition  of  Science  and  Health  she 
painted  his  character  and  his  fate  in 
these  somber  hues:  '^Behold!  thou 
criminal  mental  marauder,  that  would 
blot  out  the  sunshine  of  earth,  that 
would  sever  friends,  destroy  virtue, 
put  out  Truth,  and  murder  in  secret 
the  innocent,  befouHng  thy  track  with 
the  trophies  of  thy  guilt, — I  say.  Be- 
hold the  cloud,  no  bigger  than  a 
man's  hand,  already  rising  in  the  hori- 
zon of  Truth,  to  pour  down  upon  thy 
guilty  head  the  hailstones  of  doom/' 
This  perfervid  tirade  was  not  the  only 
chastisement  which  was  visited  upon 
Spofford.  In  1878  an  effort  was  made 
to  bring  him  to  trial  for  the  crime  of 
witchcraft.  The  charge,  it  is  true,  was 
filed  in  the  name  of  Miss  Lucretia 


SO-CALLED  39 

Brown,  of  Ipswich,  but  convincing 
evidence  shows  that  Mrs.  Eddy  was 
back  of  this  absurd  attempt  at  prose- 
cution."^ 

A  third  illustration  of  how  Mrs. 
Eddy  construed  any  sign  of  inde- 
pendent motion  in  a  disciple  was 
supplied  by  Edward  J.  Arens.  As 
soon  as  he  got  aside  from  the  line  of 
loyal  subserviency,  Mrs.  Eddy  flew  to 
her  usual  charge  of  a  diabohcal  use  of 
mental  power,  was  sure  that  the  sick- 
ness of  her  husband  was  due  to  his 
maUgn  influence,  and,  on  the  death  of 
Mr.  Eddy,  in  1882,  gravely  charged 
the  object  of  her  suspicion  and  hate 
with  the  crime  of  arsenical  poisoning 
mentally  administered.^  Further,  she 
attempted  to  prosecute  Arens  on  this 
charge.  As  Russell  H.  Conwell,  who 
was  then  practising  law  in  Boston, 
testifies,   she  asked  him  to  take  the 

iMUmine,  pp.  234-241;  F.  W.  Peabody,  The  Religio-Medical 
Masquerade,  pp.  184,  185. 
2  Milmine,  pp.  284-291.  j 


40  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

case.  ^^I  refused/'  he  says,  ^^to  be  a 
party  to  any  such  nonsensical  transac- 
tions, and  tried  to  dissuade  her,  but 
in  vain.  She  obtained  the  services  of 
another  lawyer  and  actually  brought 
proceedings  against  the  student.  Of 
course,  the  judge  threw  the  case  out 
of  court. "^ 

The  facts  just  stated  show  inciden- 
tally how  the  mind  of  Mrs.  Eddy  was 
obsessed  by  the  witchcraft  delusion, 
and  bespeak  for  her  a  solitary  distinc- 
tion as  the  one  person  in  recent  times 
who  has  attempted  to  turn  the  de- 
lusion into  a  practical  horror  by  mak- 
ing it  a  basis  for  judicial  prosecution. 
But  that  is  not  the  point  which  we  are 
emphasizing.  The  fact  which  in  the 
present  connection  is  to  be  deduced 
from  these  cases  is  the  intemperate 
thirst  of  Mrs.  Eddy  for  solitary  honor 
in  the  domain  of  mental  healing,  and 
the   fierce   intolerance   which   she   ex- 

1  Christian  Advocate,  New  York,  December  8,  1910. 


SO-CALLED  41 

hibited  toward  any  satellite  that  ever 
dared  to  show  a  sign  of  independent 
movement.  They  make  manifest  how 
she  was  penetrated  through  and 
through  with  the  spirit  of  egoistic 
assumption  and  monopoHstic  sover- 
eignty. 

The  three  instances  that  have  been 
recounted  by  no  means  complete  the 
list  of  those  which  might  be  put  in 
evidence  on  the  point  in  hand.  Very 
much  in  line  with  them  as  evidences 
of  Mrs.  Eddy^s  spirit  is  the  case  of 
Mrs.  Josephine  C.  Woodbury.  Doubt- 
less, it  is  true  that  Mrs.  Woodbury's 
high-wrought  enthusiasm  over  the 
marvels  of  the  Christian  Science  dis- 
pensation led  her  into  a  capital  ab- 
surdity. Her  aberration,  however,  in- 
volved no  disproof  of  pure  character. 
In  truth,  it  consisted  simply  in  an 
overzealous  application  of  a  fantastic 
notion  derived  from  Mrs.  Eddy  her- 
seK.      But    this    fact    was    made    no 


42  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

ground  of  forbearance.  Mrs.  Wood- 
bury was  summarily  dismissed  from 
membership  in  the  Christian  Science 
Church.  Later,  when  she  saw  fit  to 
give  to  the  public  her  revised  estimate 
of  Christian  Science  of  the  Eddyite 
type  (May,  1899),  she  was  assailed 
with  a  description  as  outrageously 
slanderous  as  ever  came  from  a  pen 
dipped  in  gall  and  bitterness.  In  her 
annual  message  to  the  mother  Church, 
in  June,  1899,  Mrs.  Eddy  made  place 
for  this  envenomed  effusion:  'The 
doom  of  the  Babylonish  woman  re- 
ferred to  in  Revelation  is  being  ful- 
filled. This  woman,  drunken  with  the 
blood  of  the  saints  and  with  the  blood 
of  the  martyrs  of  Jesus,  drunk  with 
the  wine  of  her  fornication,  would 
enter  even  the  church,  and,  retaining 
the  heart  of  the  harlot  and  the  pur- 
pose of  the  destroying  angel,  poison 
such  as  drink  of  the  Uving  water.  .  .  . 
That    which    the    revelator     saw    in 


SO-CALLED  43 

spiritual  vision  will  be  accomplished. 
The  Babylonish  woman  is  fallen:  and 
who  shall  mourn  over  the  widowhood 
of  lust,  of  her  that  hath  become  the 
habitation  of  devils,  and  the  hold  of 
every  foul  spirit  and  the  cage  of 
every  unclean  bird?''  That  the  ''Baby- 
lonish woman''  was  meant  to  denote 
Mrs.  Woodbury  is  unmistakable.  The 
fact  is  placed  entirely  beyond  the  pale 
of  reasonable  doubt  by  the  circum- 
stances under  which  the  message  to 
the  mother  Church  was  written,  by 
certain  phrases  in  the  message,  and  by 
its  parallehsm  to  other  deliverances  of 
Mrs.  Eddy  against  specific  individuals. 
Furthermore,  it  is  not  in  the  least  de- 
gree likely  that  she  would  go  out  of 
her  way  to  contradict  her  own  postu- 
lates on  the  nonexistence  of  sin  and  the 
necessity  of  ignoring  evil,  except  in 
response  to  a  concrete  occasion  which, 
from  her  point  of  view,  called  for  hot 
indignation.     More  specifically,  if  the 


44  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

testimony  of  a  Boston  attorney  can  be 
trusted,  legal  evidence  is  furnished,  in 
letters  from  Mrs.  Eddy  which  came 
under  his  notice,  that  Mrs.  Woodbury 
was  the  party  commented  upon  in  the 
message  to  the  mother  Church.^  Like 
the  apocalyptic  eiBfusions  against  Ken- 
nedy and  Spofford,  this  outburst  shows 
with  what  measureless  outrage  the 
founder  of  Christian  Science  could 
assail  the  character  of  those  who 
crossed  her  path. 

Mrs.  Eddy's  jealous  and  despotic 
temper  was  further  illustrated  in  the 
case  of  Mrs.  Augusta  Stetson,  of  New 
York,  who  was  made  the  victim,  in 
1909,  of  a  sentence  of  suspension.  In 
this  transaction  Mrs.  Eddy  kept  in 
the  background,  but  that  the  moving 
impulse  came  from  her  autocratic  hand 
cannot  fairly  be  questioned.  The  im- 
portance of  the  matter  and  the  purely 
instrumental  position  assigned  in  the 

1  Peabody,  p.  13. 


SO-CALLED  45 

constitution  of  the  Christian  Science 
Church  to  the  officials  under  her  to- 
gether guarantee  that  without  her 
command,  impHcit  or  explicit,  the  ad- 
verse sentence  would  never  have  been 
passed.  The  real  ground  of  that  sen- 
tence was  simply  the  crime  of  being 
too  prominent  and  influential.  Mrs. 
Stetson  was  charged,  it  is  true,  with 
mental  malpractice.  But  no  unprej- 
udiced observer  supposes  that  the 
charge  was  anything  more  than  a 
pretext  for  compassing  the  ends  of 
Mrs.  Eddy's  jealousy.  If  it  be 
granted  that  in  any  sense  Mrs.  Stetson 
was  guilty  of  malpractice,  it  must  be 
added  that  she  was  simply  following 
out  a  method  for  which  Mrs.  Eddy 
herself  had  suppUed  a  superabundance 
of  precedents.^ 

An  illustration  of  the  spirit  of  ex- 
clusive despotic  supremacy  in  the 
founder  of  Christian  Science — an  illus- 

1  See  below,  pp.  81-83. 


46  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

tration  in  no  wise  second  to  that 
already  given — may  be  found  in  the 
scheme  for  the  government  and  ad- 
ministration of  the  Christian  Science 
communion,  as  it  has  been  shaped  by 
Mrs.  Eddy  and  placed  on  record  in 
the  Manual  of  the  Mother  Church. 
The  way  in  which  the  existing  organi- 
zation was  effected  has  the  look  of  a 
very  sinister  piece  of  autocracy.  The 
primitive  organization  in  Boston  was 
dissolved,  and  in  explanation  of  the 
dissolution  the  following  note  appeared 
in  the  Christian  Science  Journal  for 
February,  1890:  'The  dissolution  of 
the  visible  organization  of  the  Church 
is  the  sequence  and  complement  of 
that  of  the  College  Corporation  and 
Association.  The  College  disappeared 
that  the  Spirit  of  Christ  might  have 
freer  course  among  its  students  and  all 
who  come  into  the  understanding  of 
Divine  Science;  the  bonds  of  the  or- 
ganization of  the  Church  were  thrown 


SO-CALLED  47 

away,  so  that  the  members  might  as- 
semble themselves  together  and  pro- 
voke one  another  to  good  works  in 
the  bond  of  Love.''  This  editorial 
note,  which  undoubtedly  was  printed 
by  the  dictation  or  with  the  consent 
of  Mrs.  Eddy,  was  naturally  taken  by 
the  members  of  the  preexisting  society 
as  a  sign  that  a  relative  freedom  from 
the  bonds  of  strict  organization,  in  the 
interest  of  a  more  untrammeled  spirit- 
ual life,  was  in  prospect.  They  were 
awakened  shortly  to  the  fact  that  the 
dissolution  had  been  utilized  for  the  in- 
stallation of  a  new  organization  of  the 
most  ironclad  character,  in  the  shaping 
of  which  they  had  been  granted  as  a 
body  no  part,  and  in  the  management 
of  which  they  were  to  count  as  the' 
veriest  ciphers.  They  discovered  that 
in  place  of  the  local  society  a  mother 
Church  central  to  the  whole  Christian 
Science  communion  had  been  insti- 
tuted,   and    that    over    the     mother 


48  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

Church  and  communion  a  perfectly 
autocratic  power  had  been  vested  in 
Mrs.  Eddy. 

The  new  plan  of  church  government 
as  expressed  in  the  Manual  of  the 
Mother  Church,  and  especially  in  the 
later  editions,  is  such  a  specimen  of 
centralized  sovereignty  and  of  am- 
bitious seK-deification  as  scarcely  finds 
a  parallel  in  history.  By  the  provi- 
sions of  the  Manual  all  the  officials, 
from  the  board  of  directors  down  to 
the  readers,  hold  their  positions  by  the 
approbation  or  consent  of  the  pastor 
emeritus,  Mrs.  Eddy.  She  judges  all, 
is  judged  by  none.  By  the  provisions 
of  the  Manual  the  reading  of  the  text- 
book. Science  and  Health,  must  form, 
together  with  the  reading  of  scriptural 
passages,  a  part  of  every  public  service 
in  Christian  Science  churches,  and  the 
reading  of  the  text-book  must  be  pref- 
aced by  an  announcement  of  the  title 
of  the  book  and  of  the  name  of  the 


SO-CALLED  4S 

author.  Moreover,  though  the  Scrip- 
tures are  to  be  read  first  in  order  of 
time,  the  reader  of  the  text-book  is  to 
outrank  the  reader  of  the  Bible,  the 
former  being  styled  First  Reader  and 
the  latter  Second  Reader.  By  the  pro- 
visions of  the  Manual,  for  every 
member  of  the  mother  Church  ^^the 
Bible  and  Science  and  Health  (with 
other  works  of  its  author)  must  be 
the  only  text-books  for  self-instruction 
in  Christian  Science,  and  for  teaching 
and  practicing  metaphysical  healing/'^ 
By  the  provisions  of  the  Manual  no 
preaching  is  to  be  allowed  in  Christian 
Science  churches.  The  obvious  reason 
for  this  regulation  was  the  felt  neces- 
sity of  shutting  out  everything  which 
might  in  anywise  come  into  competi- 
tion with  the  teaching  function  of  Mrs. 
Eddy.  The  regulation  was  expressed 
in  these  terms:   ^'1,   Mary  Baker  G. 

]  Of  course  by  implication  this  rule  would  apply  to  all  Christian 
Scientists  and  not  merely  to  the  numerous  members,  re^iaent 
and  nonresident,  of  the  mother  Church. 


50  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

Eddy,  ordain  the  Bible  and  Science 
and  Health  with  the  Key  to  the 
Scriptures  Pastor  over  the  Mother 
Church — the  First  Church  of  Christ 
Scientist  in  Boston,  Massachusetts — 
which  will  continue  to  preach  for  the 
Church  and  the  World.  The  subject 
of  the  Lesson-Sermon  in  the  morning 
service  of  the  mother  Church,  and  of 
the  branch  churches  of  Christ  Scien- 
tist, shall  be  repeated  at  their  evening 
service  on  Sunday.'^^  By  the  provi- 
sions of  the  Manual  it  is  made  the 
duty  of  the  officers  of  the  Church,  the 
editors  of  periodicals,  and  the  members 
of  the  publication  committees  promptly 
to  comply  with  any  written  order  of 
Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy  on  pain  of 
instant  dismission.  By  the  provisions 
of  the  Manual  no  member  of  the 
Church  shall  use  written  formulas,  or 
permit  his  patients  or  pupils  to  use 

1  Art.  xiii.  As  appears  in  the  concluding  part  of  the  citation, 
and  as  Mrs.  Eddy  made  it  to  be  understood  in  other  connections, 
the  mandate  excluding  preaching  applied  to  all  Christian  Science 
churches. 


SO-CALLED  51 

them,  as  auxiliaries  to  teaching  Chris- 
tian Science  or  for  healing  the  sick. 
The  books  of  the  founder  of  Christian 
Science  must  be  honored  by  being 
placed  on  exhibition  in  connection 
with  the  specified  functions;  such  is 
the  plain  implication  of  the  context. 
By  the  provisions  of  the  Manual  a 
boycott  is  to  be  observed  against 
publishing  houses  and  bookstores  that 
place  obnoxious  books  on  sale,  that  is, 
of  course,  books  adverse  to  Christian 
Science.  By  the  provisions  of  the 
Manual  a  Board  of  Lectureship  is 
established,  which  has  the  duty  of  se- 
curing that  each  licensed  lecture  shall 
include  a  true  reply  to  criticisms  against 
Christian  Science  and  ^^bear  testimony 
to  the  facts  pertaining  to  the  life  of  the 
Pastor  Emeritus.^' 

In  short,  the  Manual  could  not  have 
been  phrased  in  appreciably  different 
terms  had  it  been  devised  on  purpose 
to  serve  as  the  maximum  specimen  of 


62  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

the  most  limiting  and  dwarfing  despot- 
ism. It  reduces  the  members  of  the 
mother  Church  and,  by  plain  imphca- 
tion,  the  entire  Christian  Science  con- 
stituency, to  abject  mental  vassalage 
to  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy.  But  the 
most  astounding  provision  of  the  Man- 
ual remains  yet  to  be  mentioned.  In 
Article  XXII,  Section  4,  we  read: 
^^If  the  author  of  Science  and  Health 
bear  witness  to  the  offense  of  mental 
malpractice,  it  shall  be  considered  a 
sufficient  evidence  thereof.''^  Now, 
mental  malpractice,  as  being  hidden  in 
the  recesses  of  the  mind,  is,  of  course, 
beyond  possible  observation  except  to 
an  omniscient  subject,  unless  the  prac- 
titioner chooses  to  make  a  disclosure. 
Did  Mrs.  Eddy,  in  having  this  article 
inserted,  intend  to  claim  practical 
omniscience  or  power  infallibly  to 
detect  mental  secrets?  If  so,  there  is 
imperative  need  to  challenge  her  san- 

1  Fifty-sixth  edition,  1906. 


SO-CALLED'  SS 

ity.  If  she  did  not,  then  unmistakably 
she  was  guilty  of  a  piece  of  despotic 
arbitrariness  that  amounts  to  a  moral 
infamy.  Did  the  directors  of  the 
mother  Church  believe  Mrs.  Eddy  to 
be  practically  omniscient?  If  so,  then 
they  ought  to  declare  their  faith  and 
accept  such  a  judgment  on  their 
sanity  as  the  declaration  would  merit. 
If  they  did  not  believe  thus,  they 
were  guilty  of  most  unworthy  abase- 
ment in  consenting  to  serve  under  a 
regulation  so  infamously  despotic.  Re- 
call the  fact  that  Mrs.  Eddy  in  the 
most  positive  manner  charged  Arens 
with  murdering  her  husband  through 
mental  malpractice,  and  accused  others 
of  similar  enormities,  and  then  in  the 
light  of  these  events  weigh  the  accep- 
tance of  an  obligation  to  take  the  tes- 
timony of  the  author  of  Science  and 
Health  as  conclusive  evidence.  An  item 
of  legislation  more  monstrously  unjust 
and  despotic  never  saw  the  hght. 


54  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

Another  deeply  compromising  phase 
in  Mrs.  Eddy's  moral  record  consists 
in  the  extent  to  which  it  bears  the 
stamp  of  remorseless  greed.  In  the 
most  glaring  fashion  she  treated  her 
assumed  prophetical  vocation  as  a 
money  asset.  The  truths  of  the  new 
dispensation  which  she  heralded  were 
handed  out  at  a  high  figure.  The 
charge  for  her  teaching  was  on  a 
progressive  scale.  At  the  start  it  was 
whatever  she  could  get;  then  $100  in 
advance,  with  ten  per  cent  royalty  on 
the  student's  subsequent  income  from 
practice;  then  $300  for  twelve  lessons; 
and,  finally,  $300  for  seven  lessons. 
According  to  the  rate  last  named, 
one  hour's  teaching  of  a  class  of 
fifty  would  bring  to  Mrs.  Eddy  over 
$2,000. 

The  price  put  upon  her  written 
revelation  testified  equally  to  her  ap- 
preciation of  the  particular  form  of 
nothingness     which     is     denominated 


SO-CALLED  55 

money,  being  in  striking  contrast  with 
the  ordinary  plan  of  Bible  circulation. 
From  three  to  six  dollars,  according 
to  binding,  was  continuously  the 
charge  for  Science  and  Health,  and 
security  for  a  wide  circle  of  purchasers 
was  provided  in  the  requisition  that 
copies  should  be  in  the  hands  of  all 
teachers  and  students.  Nor  was  this 
the  full  extent  of  the  virtual  demand. 
Loyal  Scientists  were  not  expected  to 
content  themselves  with  copies  of  some 
one  edition  to  the  neglect  of  new 
matter  in  a  later  edition.  Sometimes 
a  special  stimulus  was  given  to  their 
inclination  to  make  a  fresh  purchase 
by  formal  emphasis  on  the  value  of 
the  additional  matter  contained  in  the 
new  issue.  Thus  in  February,  1908, 
this  notice  was  pubUshed  over  Mrs. 
Eddy^s  signature:  ^'l  request  Christian 
Scientists  universally  to  read  the  para- 
graph beginning  at  line  thirty  of  page 
442    in    the    edition    of    Science    and 


56  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

Health  which  will  be  issued  February 
29.  I  consider  the  information  there 
given  to  be  of  great  importance  at 
this  stage  of  the  workings  of  animal 
magnetism,  and  it  will  greatly  aid  the 
students  in  their  individual  experi- 
ences." Now,  what  was  the  im- 
portant information  thus  advertised? 
Simply  two  lines  of  perfectly  pithless 
stuff  reading  as  follows:  '^Christian 
Scientists,  be  a  law  to  yourselves, 
that  mental  malpractice  can  harm 
you  neither  when  asleep  nor  when 
awake." 

Extraordinary  expedients  were  also 
employed  by  Mrs.  Eddy  to  create  a 
market  for  other  productions  of  her 
pen.  In  the  Christian  Science  Journal 
for  March,  1897,  just  after  the  publi- 
cation of  the  volume  entitled  Mis- 
cellaneous Writings,  the  following  man- 
date, signed  by  Mrs.  Eddy,  appeared: 
'^Christian  Scientists  in  the  United 
States    and    Canada    are    hereby    en- 


SO-CALLED  57 

joined  not  to  teach  a  student  of 
Christian  Science  for  one  year,  com- 
mencing on  March  14,  1897.  Miscel- 
laneous Writings  is  calculated  to  pre- 
pare the  minds  of  all  true  thinkers  to 
understand  the  Christian  Science  text- 
book more  correctly  than  a  student 
can.  The  Bible,  Science  and  Health 
with  the  Key  to  the  Scriptures,  and 
my  other  published  works,  are  the 
proper  instructors  for  this  hour.  It 
shall  be  the  duty  of  all  Christian 
Scientists  to  circulate  and  to  sell  as 
many  of  these  books  as  they  can.  If 
a  member  of  the  First  Church  of 
Christ  Scientist  shall  fail  to  obey 
this  injunction,  it  will  render  him 
liable  to  lose  his  membership  in  this 
Church.''  What  a  spectacle!  An  in- 
spired prophetess,  a  second  Messiah, 
closing  the  fountain  of  instruction 
contained  in  the  voice  of  the  teacher, 
thrusting  her  literary  wares  into  the 
faces  of  all  the  faithful,  and  requiring 


68  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

them  to  be  active  agents  in  the  circu- 
lation of  those  wares  under  pain  of 
excommunication ! 

Excuse  for  such  mammonish  expe- 
dients no  sane  understanding  can  dis- 
cover. Mrs.  Eddy's  apologists,  it  is 
true,  have  offered  the  plea  that,  while 
she  took  in  large  sums  of  money,  she 
also  gave  away  large  sums.  But  the 
plea,  apart  from  the  proper  specifica- 
tions, counts  for  next  to  nothing. 
These  apologists  have  been  challenged 
to  specify  the  large  sums  and  the 
objects  for  which  they  were  given,  and 
to  the  best  of  our  information  they 
have  not  found  it  convenient  to  reply. 
Some  bestowments  of  relatively  mod- 
erate amounts  can  very  likely  be 
named;  but  the  available  evidence 
points  to  the  conclusion  that  it  better 
suited  the  temper  of  Mrs.  Eddy  to 
devote  her  growing  fortune  to  the 
perpetuation  of  a  scheme  of  virtual 
self-deification  than  to  cut  it  down  by 


SO-CALLED  59 

generous  benefactions  to  any  outside 
interest. 

Out  of  the  orders  of  facts  which  have 
been  noticed  the  proper  inferences  leap 
forth  unsohcited.  It  is  as  plain  as  the 
day  what  disposition  must  be  made 
of  the  high  claims  of  the  author  of 
Science  and  Health.  Not  until  men 
can  gather  grapes  from  thorns  and  figs 
from  thistles  will  there  be  any  excuse 
for  imagining  that  an  authoritative 
revelation  could  come  through  such  a 
person  as  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy  is 
proved  to  have  been  by  indisputable 
documentary  evidence.  No  doubt,  as 
a  woman  of  extraordinary  nervous  ten- 
sion, she  could  be  rather  fascinating  in 
her  happier  moods.  But  what  could 
be  more  foolish  and  aberrant  than  to 
permit  impressions  derived  from  any 
superficial  self-manifestation  to  weigh 
against  the  moral  blemishes  with  which 
her  career  is  broadly  streaked?  In- 
sight  into   the  nature  of  the   actual 


60  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

record  must  make  it  appear  as  one  of 
the  most  amazing  misadjustments  in 
all  religious  history  that  this  woman 
should  be  brought  into  temples  of  wor- 
ship and  placed  there,  as  respects  the 
authority  of  her  teaching,  on  a  level 
with  Jesus  Christ. 

III.  Testing  the  Claims  on 
Rational  Grounds 

Having  considered  the  claims  of 
Mrs.  Eddy  from  a  moral  point  of 
view,  it  is  in  order  now  to  subject 
them  to  rational  tests.  In  this  con- 
nection the  first  inquiry  naturally 
concerns  the  sort  of  justification  which 
she  is  able  to  offer  for  her  sweeping 
negation  of  the  material  universe,  of 
the  human  body,  of  disease  and  sin, 
and  even  of  finite  personality.  Some 
hint  has  already  been  given  of  the 
way  in  which  she  sweeps  these  by  the 
board.  But  it  will  not  be  amiss  to 
take  note  of  some   additional   speci- 


SO-CALLED  61 

mens  of  her  peculiar  propositions. 
Anyone  who  has  read  her  writings 
knows  how  they  teem  with  such  sen- 
tences as  the  following: 

^'Matter  disappears  under  the  micro- 
scope of  spirit.''^  ^^Divine  metaphys- 
ics explains  away  matter/ ^^  ^  ^Mat- 
ter and  its  beUef — sin,  sickness,  and 
death — are  states  of  mortal  mind.  .  .  . 
They  are  not  facts  of  mind.  They  are 
not  ideas,  but  illusions.''^  'The  no- 
tion of  a  material  universe  is  utterly 
opposed  to  the  theory  of  man  as 
evolved  from  mind.'^^  ''Both  the  ma- 
terial senses  and  their  reports  are 
unnatural,  impossible,  and  unreal.  ^'^ 
''AH  sensible  phenomena  are  merely 
subjective  states  of  mortal  mind.''^ 
"If  God  is  Spirit  and  God  is  all,  surely 
there  can  be  no  matter.  ^'^ 

"As  mind  is  immortal,  the  phrase 
mortal  mind  impHes  something  untrue 

» Science  and  Health,  p.  264.  « Ibid.,  p.  113. 

» Ibid.,  p.  283.  *  Ibid.,  p.  545  ^  ibid.,  p.  551. 

»  No  and  Yes,  p.  22.  ?  Unity  of  Good,  p.  39. 


62  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

and  therefore  unreal;  as  the  phrase  is 
used  in  teaching  Christian  Science  it  is 
meant  to  designate  something  which 
has  no  real  existence/'^  ^^In  reahty, 
there  is  no  mortal  mind,  and,  conse- 
quently, no  transference  of  mortal 
thought  and  will  power.''^  ^'Reduced 
to  its  proper  denomination,  matter  is 
mortal  mind,  for  mind  is  immortal, 
and  is  not  matter,  but  Spirit/^^ 
*  ^Really,  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
mortal  mind,  though  we  are  compelled 
to  use  the  phrase  in  the  endeavor  to 
express  t'he  underlying  thought. '^^ 
''We  have  learned  that  the  erring  or 
mortal  thought  holds  in  itself  all  sin, 
sickness,  and  death,  and  imparts  these 
states  to  the  body/^^ 

''Evil  is  neither  a  primitive  nor  a 
derivative,  but  is  suppositional;  in 
other  words,  a  he  that  is  incapable  of 

1  Science  and  Health,  p.  114. 

2  Retrospection  and  Introspection,  p.  93. 

»  Unity  of  Good,  p.  44.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  62,  63. 

*  Miscellaneous  Writings,  p.  3. 


SO-CALLED  63 

proof/ '^      ^^In    Christian    Science    the 
fact  is  made  obvious  that  the  sinner 
and  the  sin  are  ahke  simply  nothing- 
ness/^2     ^The   sinner  created   neither 
himself  nor  sin,  but  sin  created  the 
sinner;  that  is,  error  made  the  man 
mortal,  and  this  mortal  was  the  image 
and   likeness   of   evil,  not   of    good/'^ 
''God  could  never  impart  an  element 
of   evil,    and   man    possesses   nothing 
which  he  has  not  derived  from  God. 
How  then  has  man  a  basis  for  wrong- 
doing?''*     ''Man   is   incapable   of  sin, 
sickness,  or  death/'^    "There  is  no  sin, 
for  God's  kingdom  is  everywhere  and    |) 
supreme/'^    "What  seem  to  be  disease,    j 
vice,  and  mortality  are  illusions  of  the    \ 
physical  senses/'^     "Man  is  God's  re-     I 
flection,  needing   no    cultivation,   but      i 
ever  beautiful  and  complete.''® 


1  Miscellaneous  Writings,  p.  14. 

2  Retrospection  and  Introspection,  p.  87.  s  Ibid.,  p.  92. 
*  Science  and  Health,  p.  539.              *  Ibid.,  p.  475. 

"  No  and  Yes,  p.  45. 

7  Rudimental  Divine  Science,  p.  22. 

8  Science  and  Health,  p.  527. 


64  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

^'Some  time  it  will  be  learned  that 
mind  constructs  the  body,  and  with  its 
own  materials.  Hence  no  breakage  or 
dislocation  can  really  occur/^^  ^^Every 
sort  of  sickness  is  a  degree  of  insanity; 
that  is,  sickness  is  always  hallucina- 
tion. "^  ''Material  life,  with  all  its  sin, 
sickness,  and  death,  is  an  illusion, 
against  which  Divine  Science  is  en- 
gaged in  a  war  of  extermination.''^ 

''Spirit  is  infinite.  There  is  but  one 
Spirit,  because  there  is  but  one  In- 
finite.''* "Soul  or  Spirit  signifies  Deity 
and  nothing  else.  There  is  no  finite 
soul  or  spirit."^  "Man  is  the  idea  of 
God.  ...  He  is  above  mortal  frailty. 
...  He  coexists  with  God  and  the 
universe.  .  .  .  Man  is  and  forever  was 
God's  reflection.  .  .  .  Immortal  man 
was  and  is  God's  image  or  ideal,  even 
the  infinite  expression  of  infinite  mind, 
and    coexistent    and    coetemal    with 


1  Science  and  Health,  p.  402.  « Ibid.,  pp.  407,  408. 

s  Ibid.,  p.  543.  *  Ibid.,  p.  334.  ^  Ibid.,  466. 


SO-CALLED  65 

that  mind/^^  ^There  is  but  one  primal 
cause.  Therefore  there  can  be  no 
effect  from  any  other  cause/^^  ^Will- 
power is  not  science.  It  belongs  to  the 
senses  and  its  use  is  to  be  condemned. '^^ 
^ 'Human  will  is  an  animal  propensity, 
not  a  faculty  of  soul.  Hence  it  cannot 
govern  man  aright.''^ 

From  these  excerpts  it  is  evident 
that  the  founder  of  so-called  Christian 
Science  negates,  not  only  matter,  sick- 
ness, sin,  and  death,  but  man  also  as  a 
proper  concrete  personahty.  In  mak- 
ing God  the  one  Soul,  the  only  Spirit, 
and  the  only  cause,  and  in  defining 
man  as  simply  his  idea  or  reflection, 
located  apart  from  the  sphere  of 
growth,  sin,  evil,  sickness,  and  death, 
she  reduces  the  human  individual  logi- 
cally to  a  selfless  shadow.  She  speaks, 
indeed,  of  a  will-power  as  in  some  way 
attached  to  him,  but  indicates  that  it 


1  Science  and  Health,  pp.  200,  266,  471,  336. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  207.  8  Ibid.,  p.  144.  *  Ibid.,  p.  490. 


66  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

is  no  true  characteristic,  since  she  stig- 
matizes it  as  an  aberrant  animal  pro- 
pensity. As  a  real  agent,  gifted  with 
even  the  smallest  fragment  of  personal 
autonomy,  man  is  eliminated. 

We  are  not  unaware  that  Christian 
Scientists  occasionally  yield  to  the 
temptation  to  pare  down,  in  their  in- 
terpretations, the  force  of  Mrs.  Eddy's 
negations.  Sometimes  they  make  bold 
to  assert  that  what  these  apparent 
negations  mean  is  the  innocent  propo- 
sition that  in  the  sphere  of  reality  the 
spiritual  and  invisible  is  the  abiding 
and  worthful,  while  the  tangible  and 
visible  is  the  transient  and  unsatisfy- 
ing. But  they  should  understand  that 
in  saying  this  they  as  much  as  confess 
that  the  teacher  to  whom  they  ascribe 
plenary  authority  could  not  write  Eng- 
lish without  using  expressions  clear  out 
of  sight  of  her  meaning.  And  what 
could  be  more  ridiculous  than  to  be 
tied  to  such  an  oracle?     Then,  too, 


SO-CALLED  67 

exegesis  of  this  sort  makes  by  far  too 
tame  an  affair  of  the  '^divine  meta- 
physics'^ of  the  founder  to  be  at  all 
credible.  She  evidently  meant  it  to 
be  understood  that  she  was  not  teach- 
ing a  mere  commonplace,  but  some- 
thing quite  out  of  the  ordinary  groove. 
In  short,  her  declarations,  repeated 
over  and  over  again,  make  it  perfectly 
plain  that  she  had  embraced  and  was 
striving  with  full  energy  to  inculcate 
an  acosmistic  or  world-denying  pan- 
theism— a  fanciful  scheme  of  thought 
which  was  at  home  in  India  thousands 
of  years  before  she  set  pen  to  paper. 
Her  formal  rejection  of  pantheism  in 
no  wise  refutes  this  statement,  being 
based  on  ignorance  of  the  truth  that 
genuine  pantheism  can  be  radically 
ideaUstic  as  well  as  materialistic. 

It  is  incumbent  upon  us,  therefore, 
to  ask  for  Mrs.  Eddy's  proofs  of  her 
sweeping  negations.  Formally  she 
offers  almost  none,  and  substantially 


68  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

none  at  all.  The  sum  of  her  argumen- 
tation that  calls  for  any  sort  of  recog- 
nition lies  in  two  or  three  items.  In 
the  first  place,  she  claims  that  God's 
omnipresence  and  omnipotence  exclude 
matter,  evil,  and  whatever  else  belongs 
in  her  list  of  forbidden  things.^  Now, 
as  for  omnipresence,  manifestly,  unless 
it  is  construed  as  space-fiUing  bulk,  it 
would  in  no  wise  involve  the  exclusion 
either  of  matter  or  of  finite  spirit. 
God  is  wherever  his  efficiency  operates, 
and  matter  and  finite  spirit  do  not  bar 
out  his  efficiency  nor  limit  it  otherwise 
than  he  wills  or  permits.  Rather,  as 
subsisting  by  the  constant  energizing  of 
God,  matter  and  spirit  testify  to  his 
omnipresence.  As  for  omnipotence,  it 
cannot  be  asked  to  work  contradic- 
tions. If  God  wants  free  beings,  chil- 
dren, citizens,  he  must  create  some- 
thing besides  selfless  shadows  or  au- 


^  Retrospection  and  Introspection,  p.  77;  Unity  of  Good,  pp.  4, 
16,  17. 


SO-CALLED  69 

tomatons.    He  must  endow  men  with  a 
measure  of  real  autonomy;  and  that 
involves  the  liability  of  sin  and  a  con-    / 
sequent  requirement  for  discipline  in   ; 
the  shape  of  sickness  or  even  death.    \ 
Nothing  in  this  line  rules  out  omnipo- 
tence so  long  as  a  false  demand  is  not 
made  upon  omnipotence  to  work  con-     'o      . 
tradictions.  j^^ 

The  second  point  in  Mrs.  Eddy's  \ji^ 
argumentation  consists  in  the  plea 
that  the  senses  confessedly  deceive  in 
some  matters,  and  that,  consequently 
they  are  to  be  accounted  in  general 
false  witnesses.  Alleging  that  they  re- 
port the  earth  to  be  flat  and  stationary, 
she  declares:  ^^If  man's  ipse  dixit  as  to 
the  stellar  system  is  correct,  this  is 
because  science  is  true,  and  the  evi- 
dence of  the  senses  false."^  Mrs. 
Eddy  assumes  here  that  the  senses 
had  nothing  to  do  in  gaining  the  evi- 
dence for  the  scientific  induction  which 

1  Miscellaneous  Writings,  p.  65. 


70  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

corrects  the  hasty  naive  inference  that 
the  earth  is  flat  and  stationary.  The 
truth  is  that  the  senses  had  to  be 
industriously  employed  in  the  whole 
process  of  accumulating  the  evidence, 
that  it  was  a  case  in  which  wide,  de- 
liberate observation  mended  the  con- 
clusion flowing  from  narrow  and 
uncritical  observation.  So  this  item 
in  Mrs.  Eddy's  argumentation  gives 
no  sort  of  justification  to  her  cata- 
logue of  negations. 

Equally  empty  is  her  appeal  to  the 
fact  that  the  mind  can  frame  an 
imaginary  object,  or  dream  about  a 
nonexistent  object.^  Because  men  can 
mentally  figure  a  house  or  dream 
about  a  house,  it  does  not  follow  that 
there  are  no  real  houses.  Indeed,  if 
there  were  no  experience  of  real  houses 
there  would  be  no  rational  occasion  to 
speak  of  the  imaginary  structure  or 
dream    product.      It    is   just   because 

1  Science  and  Health,  p.  71. 


SO-CALLED  71 

there  are  realities  which  obtrude 
themselves  as  realities,  not  being 
subservient  to  individual  fancy,  and 
commanding  recognition  from  every 
normally  endowed  person,  that  men 
feel  justified  and  are  justified  in  distin- 
guishing objects  of  sense  perceptions 
from  the  ghostly  products  of  the 
mental  reverie  or  the  dream.  Before 
resorting  to  this  sort  of  illustration 
Mrs.  Eddy  would  have  done  well 
to  consider  its  logical  bearing  upon 
matters  of  most  vital  concern  to 
herself.  In  all  history  there  is  no 
record  of  a  writer  who  felt  more  pride 
in  a  mental  offspring  than  Mrs. 
Eddy  took  in  her  book  entitled  Science 
and  Health.^  As  we  have  seen,  she 
did  not  hesitate  to  resort  to  a  flagrant 
falsification  of  the  facts  in  order  to 


*  In  calling  the  book  Mrs.  Eddy's  offspring,  I  do  not  wish  to 
ignore  the  fact  that  other  hands  than  hers  had  to  do  with  shaping 
the  form  in  which  it  gained  wide  circulation.  In  particular,  the 
Rev.  James  Henry  Wiggin,  who  for  four  years  served  as  her  lit- 
erary adviser,  and  worked  over  to  the  best  of  his  opportimity  the 
phraseology  of  the  fifth,  sixth,  and  seventh  editions,  helped  to 
give  the  production  a  more  tolerable  literary  aspect. 


72  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

arrogate  sole  credit  to  herself  for  its 
underlying  ideas,  and  she  was  ready- 
to  appeal  to  the  courts  to  punish  any 
trespass  upon  her  property  right  in 
the  book.  But  if  the  senses  are  to  be 
utterly  spumed  as  false  witnesses,  how 
can  the  pubhc  know  that  Mrs.  Eddy 
ever  had  anything  to  do  with  such  a 
book?  Indeed,  how  can  the  pubhc 
know  that  either  Mrs.  Eddy  or  her 
book  ever  existed?  How  was  Mrs. 
Eddy  herself  able  to  gain  any  valid 
ground  of  confidence  in  the  existence 
of  the  book?  We  submit  that  having 
gone  on  with  her  a  priori  theorizing  to 
eUminate  the  world,  or  at  least  to 
turn  it  into  a  lying  phantom,  she 
should  have  reconciled  herself  to  rating 
Science  and  Health  as  the  baseless 
fabric  of  a  dream. 

We  judge  that  the  entire  argumen- 
tative ground  offered  by  Mrs.  Eddy 
for  her  negations  can  be  adequately 
stated  in  a  single  sentence.     What  it 


SO-CALLED  73 

amounts  to  is  simply  this:  ^1,  Mary 
Baker  G.  Eddy,  say  thus  and  so,  and 
let  all  the  earth  keep  silence  before 
me/' 

It  requires  no  searching  investiga- 
tion of  Mrs.  Eddy's  attempt  at  meta- 
physical construction  to  discover  that 
it  is  involved  in  a  tangle  of  nugatory 
and  contradictory  statements.  The 
amount  of  agency  which  is  imputed 
therein  to  the  nonexistent  is  quite 
amazing.  Mortal  mind  has  no  real 
existence,  and  yet  it  generates,  or  is 
the  seat  of,  beliefs  in  matter,  sin, 
sickness,  and  death.  There  is  no  mat- 
ter, but  matter  reduced  to  its  proper 
denomination  is  mortal  mind,  and  this 
mortal  mind  imposes  upon  the  body 
sin,  sickness,  and  death.  Sin  is  noth- 
ingness and  the  sinner  is  nothingness, 
yet  we  are  told  that  sin  created  the 
sinner.  What  is  this  but  an  absurd 
bandying  about  of  terms,  an  utterly 
fantastic  skipping  back  and  forth  be- 


\x^ 


74  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

tween  something  and  nothing?  It  is 
perfectly  evident  that  Mrs.  Eddy  had 
no  competency  for  consistent  think- 
ing on  fundamental  questions.  Re- 
peatedly her  attempts  in  that  domain 
placed  her  on  record  as  either  directly 
or  indirectly  canceling  her  own  propo- 

.  V  sitions. 

\|>  ^  An  illustration  is  afforded  on  so 
capital  a  theme  as  the  personality  of 
God.  Here  the  recipient  of  the  ^^final 
revelation  of  the  absolute  Principle  of 
scientific  being  and  healing' '  runs  into 
open  contradiction  with  herself.  In 
the  treatise  entitled  No  and  Yes  she 
wrote:  '^God  is  Love;  and  Love  is  Prin^j 
ciple,  not  person.  .  .  .  Limitless  per- 
sonality is  inconceivable.  ...  Of  God 
as  person,  human  reason,  imagination, 
and  revelation  give  us  no  knowledge.''^ 
In  the  first  edition  of  Science  and 
Health  we  read :  ^^Doctrines  and  opin- 
ions based  on  a  personal  God  are  noth- 

1  Pp.  28,  29. 


SO-CALLED  75 

ing  more  nor  less  than  beliefs  of  intel-. 
ligent  matter,  that  we  must  yield  or  spill  | 
the  inspiration  and  wine  of  Truth.  .  .  J 
The  Scriptures  inform  us  that  God  is 
Love,  Truth,  and  Life,  and  these  cer- 
tainly imply  that  he  is  Principle,  not\j 
person.  .  .  .  Our  beUefs  of  a  personal^ 
Deity  place  infinite  Life  and  Love  with- 
in the  stature  of  a  man,  make  man  God, 
or  put  God  into  matter,  which  is  athe- 
ism.''^ Equivalent  statements  are  con- 
tained in  the  third  edition.^  On  the 
other  hand,  in  the  later  editions  the 
declaration  was  inserted:  '^If  the  term 
'personaUty,'  as  appHed  to  God,  means 
infinite  personality,  then  God  is  in- 
finite personJ^^  Furthermore,  God  is 
defined  as  the  "only  Ego''' — a  defini- 
tion which  ought  to  be  regarded  as 
distinctly  assertive  of  personality,  since 
the  term  ego  in  any  warrantable  use 
can    mean    nothing    less.      Thus    the 

J  Edition  of  1873,  pp.  17-20. 

«  Third  edition  revised,  pp.  22,  24,  57. 

» Edition  of  1902,  p.  116.  *  Ibid.,  p.  588. 


76  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

prophetess  comes  round  to  assert  what 
she  had  excluded  and  even  declared 
to  be  inconceivable  and  of  atheistic 
tendency. 

In  dealing  with  the  allness  of  God 
Mrs.  Eddy  is  no  more  successful  in 
avoiding  collision  with  herself  than  on 
the  subject  of  divine  personahty.  She 
will  have  it  that  there  is  nothing  in 
existence  except  God  and  the  ideas 
in  which  he  is  reflected  or  expressed. 
At  the  same  time  she  is  compelled  to 
take  account  of  a  vast  sphere  of  error 
or  illusion.  Her  very  negations  com- 
pel her  to  magnify  this  and  to  represent 
that  it  incloses  about  the  whole  life 
of  men.  Now,  whence  comes  this 
mighty  sphere,  this  well-nigh  measure- 
less totaUty  of  illusion?  It  could  not 
possibly  have  come  from  God,  since 
he  could  not  create  anything  so  unlike 
himself  as  mortal  mind  or  its  deceptive 
products.^     It  could  not  have  come 

1  Unity  of  Good,  pp.  24,  29. 


SO-CALLED  77 

from  man  or  the  universe  as  derived 
from  God,  since  they  reflect  his  spirit- 
ual essence;  neither  could  it  result 
because  of  their  falling  away  from  God, 
since  they  are  incapable  of  lapse  and 
are  eternally  perfect;^  furthermore,  the 
fact  that  God  is  sole  cause  and  sole 
Creator^  would  debar  them  from  the 
power  to  originate  on  their  own  ac- 
count. Thus,  on  Mrs.  Eddy's  prem- 
ises, the  sphere  of  illusion  could  not 
have  been  originated.  But  it  is  here 
and  cannot  be  disposed  of  by  calUng 
it  a  mere  nothing.  A  mere  nothing 
cannot  play  any  practical  role.  Illu- 
sions, however,  if  our  oracle  may  be 
trusted,  play  an  immense  role.  The 
whole  vast  sphere  of  them  is  in  the 
realm  of  fact.  As  having,  according  to 
the  fundamental  postulates  of  Chris- 
tian Science,  no  conceivable  origin, 
that  sphere  falls  logically  under  the 


1  Unity  of  Good,  p.  13. 

« Science  and  Health,  pp.  207,  514. 


78  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

category  of  the  unoriginated  or  eternal. 
So  a  rival  is  set  over  against  the  good 
Creator,  and  the  attempt  to  overpress 
the  allness  of  God  results  logically  in 
an  equivalent  of  Persian  duaUsm. 

A  further  instance  of  failure  to  make 
things  match — and  a  specially  curious 
one — appears  in  Mrs.  Eddy's  defini- 
tion of  man.  On  one  page  she  makes 
him  ^^an  immortal  mode  of  the  divine 
mind" — a  form  of  words  correspondent 
to  her  usual  description  of  man  as  an 
''idea  of  God."  But  on  another  page 
of  the  same  treatise  she  writes,  ''Man 
is  a  celestial  body."^  The  inference 
seems  to  be  unavoidable  that  bodies 
are  included  among  the  modes  or  ideas 
of  the  divine  mind.  Accordingly,  space 
dimensions  apply  to  the  contents  of 
that  mind,  and  ideas  are  conceivably 
subjects  for  measurement  in  feet  and 
inches.  In  line  with  this  exhibition  of 
philosophical  acumen  is  that  afforded 

1  No  and  Yes,  pp.  34,  36. 


SO-CALLED  79 

by  the  proposition  cited  in  the  early 
part  of  this  essay:  ^'Christian  Science 
is  the  infinite  calculus,  defining  the 
line,  plane,  space,  and  fourth  dimen- 
sion of  Spirit/'^  If  this  strange  heap 
of  words  means  anything,  it  carries 
the  conclusion  that  its  fabricator  at- 
tached to  spirit  the  properties  appro- 
priate to  the  material  being  which  she 
professed  to  contemn. 

Space  cannot  well  be  refused  to  one 
more  illustration  of  Mrs.  Eddy's  unique 
faculty  for  self-contradiction.  As  ap- 
pears in  a  sentence  cited  above,  she 
lays  down  this  proposition:  ^^In  reahty 
there  in  no  mortal  mind,  and,  conse- 
quently, no  transference  of  mortal 
thought  and  will  power. '^^  By  deny- 
ing the  transference  of  mortal  thought 
and  will  power  she  did  not  mean,  of 
course,  to  deal  with  the  nonsensical 
assumption  that  the  faculties  of  think- 


1  Miscellaneous  Writings,  p.  22. 

*  Retrospection  and  Introspection,  p.  93. 


80  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

ing  and  willing  can  be  taken  out  of 
one  person  and  literally  conveyed  into 
the  possession  of  another  person. 
There  could  be  no  occasion  to  object 
to  what  the  wildest  imagination  never 
fancied.  The  given  statement  must 
have  been  designed  to  affirm  that 
thought  and  will  power  in  one  indi- 
vidual cannot  act  as  a  determining 
force  over  thought  and  will  power  in 
another  individual.  With  this  neces- 
sary interpretation  in  mind,  we  are 
led  to  ask,  What,  then,  did  Mrs.  Eddy 
mean  by  mental  malpractice?  Why 
did  she  describe  it  as  a  perversion  of 
mental  power  for  the  purpose  of 
tyranny,  a  form  of  baleful  influence 
which  could  be  appHed  by  the  prac- 
titioner to  a  distant  victim,  and  be 
utihzed  to  make  the  victim  beHeve  a 
he,  to  suffer  tortures,  and  to  perform 
acts  quite  contrary  to  his  habitual  dis- 
position?^     The    plain    fact    is,    her 

1  Science  and  Health,  third  edition,  chap.  vi. 


SO-CALLED  81 

whole    diatribe    against    mental    mal- 
practice,   otherwise    called    mahcious 
mesmerism,  or  mahcious  animal  mag- 
netism, assumes  a  facile  abihty  in  one 
person  to  control  thought  and  vohtion 
in   another,   and  to  control  them  by 
means   of   '^mortal  mind,''   which   in- 
deed is  formally  characterized  by  her 
as   the   source   of   sickness,    sin,    and 
death;  in  other  words,  of  all  that  is 
counted  evil  or  afflictive.    When,  there- 
fore,  she   denies   to   mortal  mind   all 
abiUty   to    transfer    thought   or   will- 
power, she  denies  what  is  inwrought 
with  her  theory  of  mental  malpractice. 
With  the  theoretical  contradiction  a 
practical  was  conjoined.     While  Mrs. 
Eddy,    in    her   formal   maxims,    very 
worthily  accentuated  the  obhgation  al- 
ways to  give  a  benevolent  direction  to 
thought  as  opposed  to  a  malicious,  she 
was  far  from  consistently  exemplifying 
these  good  maxims.    On  the  contrary, 
as  has  been  shown,  she  wrote  diatribes 


82  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

against  specific  individuals  in  which  a 
perfect  fury  of  ill  will  and  virtual 
malediction  came  to  expression.  More- 
over, she  had  a  group  of  her  students 
practice  adversely  against  these  hated 
persons.  So  have  explicitly  affirmed 
some  of  those  who  had  part  in  these 
transactions.^  One  of  them,  a  resi- 
dent in  the  metaphysical  college  with 
Mrs.  Eddy  and  her  family  for  nearly 
a  year,  has  rendered  this  testimony: 
'^Mrs.  Eddy  was  constantly  having 
attacks  of  illness.  We  were  often 
called  up  about  eleven  o'clock  at 
night  to  treat  her,  and  were  obliged 
to  remain  up  until  about  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  These  attacks,  we 
were  told,  were  brought  on  by  the 
'enemy,'  working  through  us,  as  her 
students.  She  claimed  that  the  only 
way  the  'enemy'  could  reach  her  was 
through  her  students,  she  being  so 
strong  and  so  pure  that  their  malicious 

1  MUmiue,  pp.  231.  239,  240;  Peabody.  pp.  175-194. 


SO-CALLED  83 

animal  magnetism  could  not  reach  her 
in  any  other  way.  So  we  used  to  go 
into  the  parlor,  after  breakfast  and 
supper,  each  day  and  mentally  'take 
up  the  enemy.'  ...  I  was  told  to  treat 
the  enemy'  (Kennedy,  Ames,  Choate, 
and  Childs)  to  cause  their  'old  beliefs' 
to  return,  and  prostrate  them  at  once. 
'Old  beUefs'  meant  former  diseases 
from  which  they  had  been  healed,  in 
some  cases  even  tumors  and  cancers."^ 
Other  concrete  evidences  could  be 
adduced.  So  it  stands  in  the  histori- 
cal record  that  the  founder  of  Christian 
Science  flagrantly  contradicted  in  prac- 
tice the  better  side  of  her  own  teaching 
relative  to  mental  malpractice. 

A  brief  reference  to  Mrs.  Eddy's 
interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  will 
not  be  irrelevant  to  an  estimate  of  the 
intellectual  aspect  of  her  system.  In 
the  Key  to  the  Scriptures  (incorporated 
with   Science   and   Health)    she   com- 

1  Cited  by  Peabody,  pp.  180,  181. 


84  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

ments  on  portions  of  Genesis  and  of 
the  book  of  Revelation;  that  is,  she 
pretends  to  comment  upon  them.  In 
reaUty,  she  merely  uses  the  scriptural 
texts  as  pegs  upon  which  to  hang  her 
stock  phrases.  Her  exegetical  notes 
might  just  as  well  have  been  attached 
to  almost  any  other  writings — say,  to 
passages  of  the  Gilgamesch  epic  writ- 
ten in  old  Babylon  or  to  chapters 
of  the  Upanishads  composed  in  an- 
cient India.  Indeed,  a  much  more 
congenial  subject-matter  could  have 
been  furnished  by  the  latter  than  that 
lodged  in  the  biblical  books,  a  subject- 
matter  very  close  to  Mrs.  Eddy's 
pantheistic  postulates,  whereas  she  can 
read  those  postulates  into  the  bibHcal 
texts  only  by  sheer  violence.  Her  exe- 
getical method  is  soberly  characterized 
as  interpretation  by  fiat.  A  specimen 
is  furnished  by  her  rendering  of  the 
word  beginning  in  the  first  line  of 
Genesis.     This  word,  she  says,  signi- 


SO-CALLED  85 

fies  ^Hhe  only — that  is,  the  eternal 
verity  and  unity  of  God  and  man/' 
It  means  that,  not  because  any  He- 
braist in  the  world  would  so  declare, 
but  simply  because  the  founder  of 
Christian  Science  wants  it  to  mean 
that.  Other  interpretations  have  a 
like  basis.  By  an  intemperate  scheme 
of  allegorizing,  text  after  text  is  made 
to  repeat  one  or  another  of  the  Eddyite 
aphorisms.  To  one  who  has  any  real 
knowledge  of  bibhcal  science  the  whole 
concoction  can  appear  as  nothing  bet- 
ter than  a  heap  of  vagaries.  Nor  will 
his  appreciation  be  helped  by  running 
across  sentences  which,  taken  as  they 
stand,  contain  no  intelligible  proposi- 
tion. Let  a  couple  of  examples  suffice: 
'^Understanding,"  Mrs.  Eddy  says,  'Is 
the  hne  of  demarcation  between  the 
real  and  the  unreal.''^  Now,  under- 
standing may  be  a  power  qualified  to 
discern    a    hne    of    demarcation,    but 

»  Science  and  Health,  p.  505.1 


86  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

what  mind  that  is  capable  of  clear 
thinking  would  care  to  identify  it 
with  a  line?  Again,  our  exegete  re- 
marks, ^^God  gathers  unformed 
thoughts  into  their  proper  channels, 
and  unfolds  these  thoughts.''^  How 
unformed  thoughts  can  be  gathered 
into  channels  is  very  much  of  a 
puzzle,  since  thoughts  exist  only  in 
being  formed  by  a  mental  agent,  and 
as  they  exist  are  already  where  they 
belong,  and  are  not  a  kind  of  baggage 
needing  transportation.  Of  sentences 
like  these  in  Mrs.  Eddy's  writings 
there  is  no  dearth.  Their  name  is 
legion. 

In  relation  to  the  Christian  Science 
scheme  of  heahng,  the  founder  has 
given  ample  illustration  of  her  fertile 
gift  for_^-self-Gontradiction.  She  has 
refuted  in  her  own  person  the  extrava- 
gant claims  put  forth  for  that  scheme. 

1  Science  and  Health,  p.  506. 


SO-CALLED  87 

The  testimony  cited  above  from  one  of 
her  students  affords  proof,  and  much 
more  is  available.  Up  to  the  time  of  ~^, 
her  relative  seclusion — ^whatever  may  1 
have  been  the  case  after  that  date — 
she  was  subject  to  nervous  crises,  at  ' 
times  so  acute  as  to  result  in  sus- 
pended consciousness.^  Nor  was  her 
mental  condition  any  more  normal. 
Christian  Science  was  far  from  secur- 
ing to  her  constant  interior  serenity. 
Close  up  to  the  end  of  her  career  there 
were  recurring  intervals  in  which  her 
mind  was  fairly  ridden  by  the  witch- 
craft delusion.  No  person  of  equal 
prominence  in  recent  times  has  shown 
anything  Uke  the  same  degree  of  this 
baleful  obsession. 

The  inabihty  of  Christian  Science  to 
make  good  its  claim  was  thus  clearly 
demonstrated  in  the  person  of  its 
founder.  Moreover,  she  was  com- 
pelled in  a  wider  range  practically  to 

1  Milmine,  pp.  21,  159,  301,  302. 


88  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

admit  the  powerlessness  of  the  Chris- 
tian Science  method  to  fulfill  its 
vaunted  office  in  healing  aU  manner 
of  bodily  ills.  The  incompetency  of 
her  practitioners  to  wrestle  success- 
fully with  breaks  and  dislocations 
compelled  her  to  admit  the  propriety 
of  passing  over  such  matters  to  the 
regular  surgeon.^  The  peril  involved 
to  communities  in  the  attempts  of 
her  healers  to  treat  contagious  dis- 
eases as  simply  false  beliefs  forced  her, 
as  means  of  protection  against  the 
rising  wrath  of  an  outraged  people,  to 
advise  the  said  healers  not  to  deal 
with  such  cases,  and  to  obey  the  law 
in  reporting  them.^  Once  more,  the 
pertinacity  of  disease,  as  frequently 
manifested  in  resisting  the  healing  art 
of  Christian  Science,  led  her  to  grant 
permission  to  her  practitioners  to  call 
in   an   M.    D.   to   diagnose   obstinate 


1  Science  and  Health,  1886,  p.  328. 

2  Christian  Science  Journal,  March,  1901;  December,  1902. 


SO-CALLED  89 

cases. ^  Now,  such  a  list  of  concessions 
amounts  practically  to  a  breakdown 
of  the  exclusive  claims  of  Christian 
Science,  and  licenses  the  pubHc  to  rate 
its  therapeutic  value  at  a  very  mod- 
erate figure.  Mrs.  Eddy,  in  her  easy- 
going, sophistical,  and  lordly  fashion, 
may  throw  the  blame  of  these  failures 
of  her  scheme  on  the  existing  condi- 
tion of  the  world.  But  what  we  want 
of  medical  science  is  ability  to  deal 
with  the  actual  world.  A  scheme 
which  cannot  do  this,  and  yet  boasts 
of  sole  legitimacy,  advertises  itseK  as 
a  humbug. 

In  view  of  the  threefold  slump  from 
her  high-sounding  premises,  on  the 
part  of  Mrs.  Eddy,  Christian  Scien- 
tists cannot  be  regarded  as  earning 
serious  rebuke  when,  as  often  happens, 
they  resort  to  regular  physicians  in 
search  of  rehef  from  their  ailments. 
With  their  leader  going  ahead  at  such 

».  Manual  of  the  Mother  Church,  1906,  Article  X,  Section  3. 


90  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

a  pace  in  the  role  of  inconsistency,  why 
should  it  be  thought  that  they  are 
under  obligation  to  pay  respect  to  the 
claims  of  consistency? 

What  is  to  be  said  about  the  numer- 
ous cures  claimed  for  Christian  Science? 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be  said  with  all 
emphasis  that  no  reliable  conclusion 
can  be  drawn  by  merely  giving  atten- 
tion to  the  apparently  successful  at- 
tempts at  cure.  Every  quack  who  has 
ever  gained  considerable  notoriety  has 
been  able  to  make  a  brilliant  showing 
by  parading  his  successes  and  leaving 
out  of  sight  the  vast  catalogue  of  his 
failures.  That  Christian  Science  should 
be  able  to  exhibit  a  specially  ample  list 
of  cures  is  no  proper  occasion  for 
either  surprise  or  admiration,  since 
Mrs.  Eddy,  instead  of  occupying  her- 
self with  practicing  her  method,  de- 
voted herself  to  the  manufacturing  of 
practitioners.  As  her  course  occupied 
only  two  or  three  weeks,  it  naturally 


SO-CALLED  91 

appealed  to  those  who  wished  to  be 
equipped  for  earning  a  UveUhood  in 
short  order.  Thus  a  considerable  corps 
of  healers  was  set  to  work,  all  of  them 
interested  in  glorifying  their  calling. 
Naturally,  reports  of  cures  mounted  to 
a  high  figure,  and  even  included  some 
instances  of  horses  and  dogs  receiving 
mental  treatment  very  much  to  their 
advantage.  But  what  about  the  cases 
in  which  the  Christian  Science  method 
proved  to  be  a  failure?  What  about 
the  cases  in  which  it  was  shown  up  as 
nothing  better  than  homicidal  foolish- 
ness? No  advertising  agency  has  been 
in  operation  to  keep  such  cases  in 
view.  No  induction,  however,  which 
leaves  them  out  of  consideration  can 
claim  respect,  and  they  make  a  tre- 
mendous offset. 

Furthermore,  in  any  true  estimate, 
instances  of  temporary  relief  must  be 
distinguished  from  true  and  permanent 
cures.      The   stimulus   of   a   specially 


92  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

potent  form  of  suggestion  will  often 
cause  an  inward  elation  which  is  able 
to  offset  the  power  of  disease  or  in- 
firmity for  the  time  being.  But  the 
sphere  of  the  efficacious  working  of 
such  an  agency  is  intrinsically  limited, 
so  that  the  permanency  of  the  ap- 
parent benefit  is  made  problematical. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  many  Christian 
Science  cures  have  been  transient.  A 
typical  case  is  that  of  the  British  earl 
who  was  reported  by  competent  medi- 
cal advice  to  be  suffering  from  fatty 
degeneration  of  the  heart.  He  believed 
that  he  was  cured  by  Christian  Science 
and  wrote  about  the  marvel  in  the  Cos- 
mopolitan. In  ninety  days,  however, 
fatty  degeneration  of  the  heart  took  him 
out  of  the  land  of  the  living.^  Instances 
of  this  order,  we  contend,  must  enter 
into  the  basis  of  any  true  estimate, 
and  the  so-called  science  which  ignores 
them  is  simply  a  pseudo-science. 

» C.  R.  Brown,  Faith  and  Health,  p.  95. 


SO-CALLED  93 

That  now  and  then  one  whom  an 
adept  in  medical  science  has  pro- 
nounced to  be  suffering  from  a  serious 
ailment  should  seem  to  be  permanently 
cured  under  Christian  Science  treat- 
ment affords  obviously  no  sure  proof 
that  this  treatment  is  ever  adequate 
for  organic  disease,  since  medical 
science  does  not  claim  that  the  diag- 
nosis even  of  the  skilled  physician  is 
invariably  correct.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  in  individual  instances  it  should 
result  in  a  too  unfavorable  judgment 
of  the  patient^s  condition. 

By  granting  that,  within  a  cer- 
tain range,  actual  cures  may  be 
wrought  through  the  agency  of  Chris- 
tian Science  practitioners,  we  make  no 
real  approach  to  conceding  the  truth 
of  Mrs.  Eddy's  system.  These  cures 
no  more  prove  the  vahdity  of  her 
rehgio-medical  dogmatics  than  the  sim- 
ilar cures  wrought  at  mediaeval  shrines 
prove  the  presence  of  a  supernatural 


94  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

virtue  in  the  relics  of  the  saints.  So 
far  as  an  efficacious  ground  is  con- 
cerned, the  cures  of  the  practitioners 
belong  in  a  common  class  with  those 
still  wrought  at  Lourdes  or  at  the 
sanctuary  of  Saint  Anne  de  Beaupre. 
In  all  these  instances  we  have  illustra- 
tion of  what  the  psychological  factor 
can  accomphsh;  that  is,  of  what  can 
be  done  by  agencies  and  conditions 
which  are  specially  stimulating  to  the 
hope,  expectation,  and  faith  of  the 
patient.  That  in  deahng  with  certain 
forms  of  functional  as  opposed  to 
organic  ailments  this  factor  can  be 
operated  with  good  effect  is  com- 
monly recognized  by  medical  science, 
and  had  begun  to  be  recognized  be- 
fore Mrs.  Eddy  appeared  upon  the 
scene.  The  founder  of  Christian 
Science  made  no  real  discovery.  She 
simply  (following  Quimby)  laid  hold  of 
a  truth  which,  in  this  age  of  indus- 
trious  psychological   and   physical  re- 


SO-CALLED  95 

search,  was  bound  to  come  to  its 
own,  and  surrounded  it  with  a  mass 
of  fantastic,  exaggerated,  and  mu- 
tually contradictory  assertions.  To 
take  her  shallow  and  pretentious 
scheme,  and  make  it  a  substitute  for 
genuine  medical  science,  with  its  dem- 
onstrated efficacy  to  ameliorate  suf- 
fering, to  master  various  forms  of 
disease,  and  to  arrest  contagion,  is 
little  less  than  a  sacrilege  against  sane 
intelligence. 

One  more  consideration  enters  into 
a  fair  estimate  of  the  healing  art  of 
Christian  Science.  Not  only  is  its 
power  for  good  limited;  there  is  in  it  a 
certain  intrinsic  tendency  to  mischief. 
It  directs  its  votaries  to  create  for 
themselves  a  fooFs  paradise,  from 
which  all  sickness,  sin,  pain,  and  death 
are  barred  out  by  mental  fiat.  Now, 
it  may  be  possible  in  many  individual 
instances  to  follow  out  this  prescrip- 
tion temporarily.     A  man  may  think 


96  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

away  all  that  is  afflictive  and  ex- 
perience a  kind  of  exaltation  above  all 
mortal  ills  for  a  time.  But  realities 
are  stubborn  things.  To  mentally  re- 
peat the  equation,  ^ ^Accident,  sickness, 
sin,  disease,  pain,  and  death  are  equal 
to  zero,"  does  not  make  them  equal  to 
zero.  They  are  here  and  have  to  be 
reckoned  with.  They  come  right  up 
to  the  door  of  the  fictitious  paradise  in 
which  a  man  thinks  to  intrench  him- 
self, and  no  lock  or  bolt  will  keep 
them  out.  To  negate  them  as  baseless 
phantoms,  to  keep  on  negating  them 
year  in  and  year  out,  must  involve  a 
decided  strain,  and  a  strain  that  in  the 
more  delicately  organized  is  likely  to 
be  perilous  to  mental  balance.  It  is 
enough  to  make  the  head  swim  to  be 
under  requisition  to  deny  persistently 
the  existence  of  the  most  obtrusive 
reahties,  to  keep  on  turning  the  world 
into  a  ghost  world,  a  concatenation  of 
empty  illusions.    Through  this  feature 


SO-CALLED  97 

Christian  Science  teaching  and  prac- 
tice are  intrinsically  fitted  to  aggravate 
liabiKties  to  insanity.  The  period  of 
trial  has  been  too  short  to  give  ade- 
quate illustration  of  the  given  tend- 
ency, but  it  is  logically  in  the  phase  of 
the  system  upon  which  we  have  been 
commenting;  and  it  finds  means  of 
nourishment  in  another  phase. 

As  has  been  noticed,  the  mind  of  the 
founder  was  fairly  obsessed  with  the 
notion  of  the  power  of  mind  over 
mind  in  an  adverse  sense.  Personal 
idiosyncrasy  may  have  had  something 
to  do  with  the  obsession.  But  there  is 
a  certain  basis  for  this  sort  of  ex- 
perience in  Christian  Science  postu- 
lates. If  a  benevolent  direction  of 
thought  by  the  healer  has  such  un- 
limited efficacy  to  work  benefit,  why 
may  not  a  malevolent  direction  of 
thought  have  a  corresponding  power  to 
work  mischief?  Herein  a  ground  of 
apprehension   and   uneasiness  is  pro- 


98  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

vided.  This  may  be  counteracted  in 
considerable  part  by  the  action  of  the 
common  sense  of  the  general  com- 
munity; but  this  wholesome  outside 
restraint  is  not  certain  to  be  alto- 
gether effectual.  A  liability  remains 
that  something  of  that  acute  suspicion 
and  horror  which  afflicted  their  founder 
should  invade  the  ranks  of  Christian 
Scientists.  However,  we  will  not  press 
this  point,  and  content  ourselves  with 
urging  that  an  ultra  attempt  to  frame 
a  fictitious  paradise,  persistently  car- 
ried on,  involves  a  certain  hazard  to 
the  mental  balance  of  the  more  deli- 
cately organized. 

It  may  be  granted  that  a  measure 
of  quietistic  teaching,  or  emphasis  on 
the  repose  of  faith,  is  adapted  to  the 
condition  in  which  people  are  often 
found.  It  serves  a  good  purpose  to 
tell  those  who  have  been  wrestling 
with  their  burdens  and  difficulties 
that  something  besides  wrestling  is  in 


SO-CALLED  99 

order;  that  it  is  their  high  privilege 
to  cast  their  cares  upon  Him  who 
careth  for  them,  and  to  rest  in  the 
infinite  goodness  and  love.  In  this 
hne  of  procedure  the  ills  of  hfe,  if  not 
eliminated  outright,  will  be  made  to 
lose  much  of  their  bitterness,  and  a 
serenity  of  soul  will  be  gained  which 
no  self-assertive  striving  could  procure. 
But  who  needs  to  go  to  Christian 
Science  for  a  salutary  quietism  of  this 
sort?  It  is  a  commonplace  of  ordinary 
Christianity,  a  remedy  for  overanxiety 
which  the  gospel  has  ever  been  offering 
to  the  burdened  and  the  troubled. 
The  enjoyment  of  its  benefit  is  in  no 
wise  dependent  on  saddling  oneself  with 
Mrs.  Eddy's  arbitrary  and  fantastic 
dogmas. 

A  word  will  not  be  out  of  place  on 
the  merits  of  Mrs.  Eddy's  system  in 
relation  to  young  subjects.  Medical 
authority  has  often  remarked  on  the 
signal    unfitness    of    the    methods    of 


100  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

Christian  Science  to  meet  the  physical 
needs  of  infants.  What  about  the 
adaptation  of  its  pecuHar  tenets  to  the 
moral  needs  of  children  and  youth? 
Take  such  maxims  as  the  following: 
'^Man  is  incapable  of  sin'^;  ^^God  would 
never  impart  an  element  of  evil,  and 
man  possesses  nothing  which  he  has 
not  derived  from  God'';  'There  is  no 
sin,  for  God's  kingdom  is  everywhere 
and  supreme.'^  Will  it  tend  to  put 
good  fiber  into  the  consciences  of  the 
young  to  be  familiarized  with  such 
propositions?  Christian  Scientists  in 
general  have  come  out  of  communions 
which  repeat  the  bibhcal  emphasis  on 
the  reality,  turpitude,  and  genuine 
demerit  of  sin;  and  the  benefit  of  their 
antecedent  training  has  been  carried 
with  them.  How  will  it  be  with  a 
generation  that  from  the  start  is 
taught  to  regard  sin  as  nothing  more 
than  one  of  the  illusions  of  the  mortal 
mind  which  itself  is  declared  to  be  in 


SO-CALLED  101 

reality  nonexistent?  Will  there  not  be 
a  liability  that  the  theoretical  anti- 
nomianism  will  result  in  practical 
antinomianism  or  indifference  to  moral 
distinctions?  Plainly,  if  a  different 
outcome  is  provided  for,  it  will  be  on 
the  score  of  expedients  quite  other 
than  the  instilling  of  the  tenets  of 
'^divine  metaphysics^'  as  taught  by 
Mrs.  Eddy. 

We  conclude  that  the  claims  of 
Christian  Science,  as  a  heahng  art, 
ought  to  be  cut  down  to  a  modest 
residuum,  while  the  high  pretensions  of 
Mrs.  Eddy  as  the  founder  of  a  final 
rehgio-medical  system  are  utterly  base- 
less. It  does  not  follow,  however,  that 
we  think  of  Christian  Science  as  des- 
titute of  all  competency  to  maintain 
and  advance  itself.  The  money  in- 
terest of  the  movement,  so  conspicuous 
from  the  start,  may  be  expected  to 
work  as  an  efficient  spur  to  propagand- 
ism,  so  long  as  anything  like  a  compact 


102  CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE 

organization  is  maintained.  And  new 
recruits  will  not  fail  to  come  forward, 
so  long  as  there  are  people  whose 
slender  logic  permits  them  to  suppose 
that  heaUng  expedients,  which  the 
author  of  Science  and  Health  was  at 
length  compelled  practically  to  admit 
to  be  of  limited  efficacy,  and  which  are 
essentially  paralleled  in  numerous  his- 
toric connections,  can  prove  that 
Christian  Science  as  taught  by  the 
founder  is  a  divinely  inspired  and 
authoritative  system. 


Date 

Due 

^  -&'' 

13 

^  ' '  , 

".■-, 

Mp:-- 

^: 

, 

^ 

BP955 .S54 

Christian  science  so-called; 

Princeton  Theological  Semmary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00010  5199 


